RIVERSIDE TEXTBOOKS 
IN EDUCATION 

EDITED BY ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION 
LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY 



DIVISION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 

UNDER THE EDITORIAL DIRECTION 

OF ALEXANDER INGLIS 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



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FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



BY 



LAWRENCE AUGUSTUS AVERILL, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE MASSACHUSETTS 
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL AT WORCESTER 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • SAN FRANCISCO 



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COPYRIGHT, I921, BY LAWRENCE AUGUSTUS AVERILL 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



I X ^ 



CAMBRIOGB ■ MASSACHUSETTS 
U • S • A 



APR -4 (921 
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TO MY WIFE 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

One of the problems in organization to which teachers of 
education in normal schools and colleges have recently given 
much careful thought is that of what type of introductory 
course in education is best suited to the needs of the student 
beginning the subject — what type of introductory subject- 
matter will best serve to orient prospective teachers in refer- 
ence to the field of education. Different answers have been 
arrived at in different institutions and sections of the coun- 
try, varying somewhat with the purposes in mind in the 
training to be given. Even the answers arrived at must be 
regarded as somewhat tentative in character, and subject 
to further modification as the developing needs of profes- 
sional training may indicate as desirable. 

Four main lines of approach to the subject of education 
may now be said to be employed, in different institutions 
and places. These may be characterized by the terms 
historical, sociological, psychological, and instructional. The 
historical approach introduces the prospective teacher to 
the subject by presenting the larger problems of present-day 
education in the light of their historical development. The 
sociological approach provides an informational introduc- 
tion, intended to reveal the place and purpose of public 
education in a democratic society, and dealing with such 
topics as the social necessity of education, the means and 
aims of present-day schools, the principles underlying the 
maintenance and administration of public education, the 
school as a selective agent for society, and the place and 
work of the teacher in the scheme of education provided 
by the State. The psychological approach deals with the 
nature of the mind and of the educational process, and 
reveals to the student how fully education is primarily a 
process of producing desirable and preventing undesirable 



viii EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

changes in human beings. The instructional approach be- 
gins immediately with the teaching process itself, and 
reveals the teacher as the instrument and the pupil as the 
object of education, and how these two meet and interact 
through the machinery of the school as expressed in school 
organization, discipline, programs, curriculum, studying, 
reciting, grading, and promotion, and the importance of 
the teacher's personality in such a process. 

It has been one of the purposes of the Riverside Textbooks 
in Education to present to teachers and students texts which 
will enable instructors to follow any one of these four main 
approaches, or to combine two or more in an introductory 
course in teacher training. The first line of approach has 
been covered in the Editor's Public Education in the United 
States; a textbook for the second is in preparation, and will 
be ready before long; the third is covered by the present 
volume; and the fourth has been covered by Sears's Class- 
room Organization and Control. 

Professor Averill's text, representing the psychological ap- 
proach, presents the child to be taught in the threefold as- 
pect of his original equipment of instincts and capacities, 
the processes by means of which he learns, and the differ- 
ences that exist between children. The study of the child's 
original equipment is approached through a study of his 
behavior. This is followed by a study of the child's hered- 
ity, and capacity for learning. The third main division of 
the volume, discusses the differences between individuals 
and the causes for them, and the effect of these differences 
on the problem of child training. 

The book, in keeping with its introductory character, is 
divided into a series of Lessons, rather than chapters; and 
these are preceded by a few suggestions for Observational 
Studies to prepare the student better for what is to be pre- 
sented in the lessons. A series of Topics for Further Study 
have been added to the lessons, and finally a related series, 
entitled The Lesson Applied, have been provided to clinch 
what has been presented for study. The teaching form of 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION ix 

the volume evidences long and successful experience in 
teaching elementary classes, as well as thoughtful organiza- 
tion on the part of the author. Representing, as the volume 
does, the consensus of opinion as to what a course in ele- 
mentary education al psychology_ should contain, it is be- jl ^^ 
lieved that this new textbook presents a treatment that 
will be welcomed by teachers of the subject in normal 
schools and teacher-training courses generally. 

Ellwood p. Cubberley 



fi 



^ 



FOREWORD 



In the late summer of 1919 the section of Psychology In- 
structors of the Massachusetts State Normal School Teach- 
ers Association, in session at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, 
raised their voices in a united plea for textbooks in psychol- 
ogy which should be more within the range of young teachers- 
in-training than is true of most texts in this subject now 
available. That plea is, in part, the justification for the addi- 
tion of the present book to the already large number of texts 
in psychology which are on the market. 

The experience of several years in offering courses in 
professional subjects to teachers-in-training has demon- 
strated to the author of this manual the tremendous need 
which exists for inclusive texts in psychology that are adapt- 
able to training-school work. It is my frank opinion, checked 
up by that of a goodly number of my colleagues in normal- 
school work, that there are very few textbooks indeed at the 
present time which meet the needs of training-school classes 
in psychology. In a very special sense normal-school psy- 
chology must be highly practical, highly workable, and 
highly understandable. There is no time in our two-year 
courses for laboratory experimentation, much as we ought 
to have it, nor for going into theoretical or controversial 
territory. What we need and must have is a psychology 
stripped naked of all needless technicalities, disentwined from 
all irrelevant supposition and theorizing, and articulated as 
closely as possible with the schoolroom situation. There is 
no time for incursion into any of the enticing psychological 
by-ways, fascinating and suggestive as such inquiry might 
be. Rather, the psychology of the training school must 
fashion and temper a practical tool for the hands of the 
teacher-craftsman. 

The general psychology found in the ordinary college curric- 



FOREWORD xi 

ulum is not this sort of psychology. It has to do rather with 
the behavior of adults than with that of children of school 
age. Its practical value for young women teachers-in-train- 
ing, eighteen and nineteen years of age, is not sufl&ciently 
great to justify its inclusion in the curriculum of the training 
school. The college student will rarely, if ever, encounter the 
schoolroom situation as a teacher of children; the normal- 
school student, on the other hand, will, in the natural order 
of things, encounter exactly that situation. Hence she must 
be equipped with such information concerning human be- 
havior as is indispensable for understanding something of the 
nature of child behavior. 

Unfortunately, however, it has been true until somewhat 
recently that the training school has been dependent for its 
textbooks in psychology upon the college (or the university), 
with the result that the study of psychology in the former in- 
stitution has been not infrequently of very doubtful value. 
Normal-school students have occasionally been more con- 
versant with theories of color-blindness, or with theories of 
emotion, or with absolute and differential limens of sensi- 
tivity, or with color zones of the retina, than they have with 
the fundamental instincts of childhood, or with heredity 
and euthenics, or with the genesis and growth of the higher 
thought processes of children. It is an encouraging symptom, 
however, that within the past few years there have appeared 
several textbooks in child psychology which have been ex- 
tremely valuable in the training of teachers for the public 
schools. 

In general, aside from their impracticability for teachers 
of children, the textbooks in adult psychology which have 
been available have been unsuited for normal-school stu- 
dents because of the fact that their scientific terminology 
and style of language could not be readily understood by the 
students in whose hands they were placed. It has been not 
unlike giving a kindergarten child an essay of Burke, and 
bidding him not only read, but comprehend and assimilate 
and weave into his own life. It should not be forgotten that 



xii FOREWORD 

first-year students in a teacher-training school were the 
preceding year high-school students, and that their powers 
of scientific comprehension are extremely weak — some- 
times pitifully so. College courses in psychology, on the 
other hand, are often not taken until the second, third, or 
perhaps fourth year, when the students — who are ordi- 
narily a far more highly selected group in the first place than 
are girls who enter normal schools — are relatively mature 
in their thought processes. The course in the normal school, 
however, must ordinarily come in the first year, in order to 
prepare the way for courses in educational psychology, 
principles of education, and other professional subjects sub- 
sequently. Nor can it rest upon an experimental basis be- 
cause of the lack of time and equipment for laboratory work. 
It must, therefore, be largely built up upon the experience 
and observation of the students. 

In preparing this volume the author has had all these facts, 
and a great many others, in mind, his ideal having been to 
make available for teachers of psychology a manual which 
should contain in a single volume the minimum essentials 
in psychology for teachers-in-training. Obviously, no ex- 
haustive treatment could be given to any topic without mak- 
ing the text too cumbersome to be easily handled; it has been, 
however, possible to summarize the outstanding facts and 
principles of child psychology, and suggest a few carefully 
selected references for further reading under each caption 
to supplement the briefer text. 

How well the writer has succeeded in these matters must 
be left to the instructor who makes use of the text. 

Lawrence A. Averill 

February 8, 1921 



I 



TO THE INSTRUCTOR 

The author of this textbook herewith places in your hands 
an epitome of his own course in psychology for teachers-iu' 
training. It would be presumptuous for him to recommend 
just how the manual should be used by other instructors. 
A word of counsel will not, however, be amiss. It is to be 
borne in mind throughout that the book deals rather with 
stating and discussing succinctly the fundamental principles 
of child and adult psychology than with the application of 
these principles to the teaching situation. The latter end 
is to be accomplished in subsequent professional courses in 
educational psychology and principles of education, after 
the student has mastered some of the underlying facts of 
psychology. 

At the first of each lesson are included some suggestive 
topics for the observation period. These topics are closely 
related in each case to the subject matter of the appended 
lesson, and, when properly expanded by the instructor, may 
be made to furnish a very valuable supplementary exercise 
for the students as they observe from day to day in the prac- 
tice school. 

In the "Topics for Special Study and Report" at the end 
of each lesson an attempt has been made to indicate sug- 
gestive relevant subjects for further inquiry. Only three or 
four such topics are presented, in the hope that the in- 
structor will find time to have them investigated. It has 
been the experience of the author that where a score or so 
of such supplementary questions have been included at the 
end of chapters they are likely to be neglected for lack of 
time. He has, therefore, attempted to limit them to a 
very few of the most important applications of the principles 
discussed in the lesson. 

The same consideration has been responsible for restrict- 



xiv TO THE INSTRUCTOR 

ing the number of references for further reading. Only the 
most directly related psychological literature has been cited, 
and it is highly desirable that the students be required to 
familiarize themselves with every reference given. In no 
other way can they cover in anything like a satisfactory 
manner the minimum essentials of psychology for teachers 
of children. 

Finally, in order to derive the fullest returns from the use 
of the manual, the students should be expected to study 
children extensively and intensively. Throughout the en- 
tire course in psychology they should be required to make 
such free observations as will to some degree at least parallel 
the classroom work, thus not only rendering themselves more 
familiar with the behavior of children under various condi- 
tions, but at the same time supplying as it were the illus- 
trative material for the class discussions. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SELECTED 
REFERENCES 

A Reference Library for Supplementary Use in 

CONNECTION WITH THIS MaNUAL 

Only those books to which the student is referred in the en- 
suing lessons are included, and they should represent the 
minimum of outside reading required. Titles marked by 
the star (*) are included rather for occasional reference than 
for regular use. 

1. Addams, J. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. New 
York: The Macmillan Company, 1910. 162 pp. 

2. Angell, J, R. Psychology. (Fourth edition, revised.) New 
York: Henry Holt & Co., 1908. 468 pp. 

3. Betts, G. H. The Mind and Its Edxicaiion. (Revised and en- 
larged edition.) New York :D.Appleton& Co., 1916. 311pp. 

4. Breese, B. B. Psychology. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917. 
482 pp. 

5. Castle, W. E. Heredity. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 
1911. 184 pp. 

6. Conklin, E. G. Heredity and Environment in the Making of 
Men. 1915. 

7. Davenport, C. B. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. New 
York: Henry Holt & Co., 1913. 298 pp. 

8. Dugdale, R. L. The Jukes. (Fourth edition.) New York: 
G. P. Putnam's Sons Company, 1910. 120 pp. 

9. Edman, I. Human Traits and their Social Significance. 
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920. 467 pp. 

10. Galton, Sir F. Hereditary Genius. New York: The Mac- 
millan Company, 1884. 390 pp. 

11. Goddard,H.H. The Kallikak Family. New York : The Mac- 
millan Company, 1913. 121 pp. 

12. Groos, K. The Play of Animals. New York: D. Appleton 
& Co., 1898. 341 pp. 

13. Groszmann, M. P. The Exceptional Child. New York: 
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917. 764 pp. 



I 



xvi BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SELECTED REFERENCES 

14. *Hall,G. S. Adolescence. (2 vols.) D. Appleton & Co., 1904 
589 and 784 pp. 

15. Hall, G. S. Aspects of Child Life and Education. Boston 
Ginn & Co., 1907. 326 pp. 

16. *Hall, G. S. Educational Problems. (2 vols.) New York 
D. Appleton & Co., 1911. 710 and 714 pp. 

17. Hall, G. S. Youth, Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene. New 
York: D. Appleton & Co., 1906. 379 pp. 

18. Holmes, A. Backward Children. Indianapolis: Bobbs- 
Merrill Company, 1915. 274 pp. 

19. James, W. Psychology. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1900. 
478 pp. 

20. Jewett, F. G. The Next Generation. Boston: Ginn & Co., 
1914. 235 pp. 

21. Jordan, D. S. Footnotes to Evolution. New York: D. Apple- 
ton & Co., 1909. 392 pp. 

22. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Fundamentals of Child Study. New 
York: The Macmillan Company, 1911. 384 pp. 

23. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Genetic Psychology. New York: The 
Macmillan Company, 1910. 373 pp. 

24. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Studies in Psychology. Boston: Richard 
G. Badger, 1918. 194 pp. 

25. Lee, J. Play in Education. New York: The Macmillan 
Company, 1915. 500 pp. 

26. Mangold, G.B. Child Problems. New York: The Macmillan 
Company, 1910. 381 pp. 

27. Norsworthy, N., and Whitley, M. T. Psychology of Child- 
hood. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918. 375 pp. 

28. Parmelee, M. The Science of Human Behavior. New York: 
The Macmillan Company, 1913. 443 pp. 

29. Payne, G. H. The Child in Human Progress. New York: 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916. 400 pp. 

30. Pillsbury, W. B. Essentials of Psychology. New York: The 
Macmillan Company, 1912. 362 pp. 

31. Puffer, J. A. The Boy and His Gang. Boston: Houghton 
Mifflin Company, 1912. 188 pp. 

32. Rowe, S. H. Habit Formation and the Science of Teaching. 
New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909. 308 pp. 

33. Shinn, M. W. The Biography of a Baby. Boston : Houghton 
Mifflin Company, 1900. 247 pp. 

34. *Shinn, M. W. Notes on the Development of a Child. (2 vols.) 
Berkeley : University of California Press, 1909. 424 and 258 pp. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SELECTED REFERENCES xvii 

35. Stiles, P. G. TJie Nervous System and its Conservation. Phila- 
delphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1914. 229 pp. 

36. Tanner, A. E. The Child. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 
1915. 512 pp. 

37. Terman, L. M. The Measurement of Intelligence. Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916. 

38. Terman, L. M. The Intelligence of School Children. Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin Company. 

39. Terman, L. M. The Hygiene of the School Child. Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914. 417 pp. 

40. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology. Vol. i. The Origi- 
nal Nature of Man. New York: Teachers' College, 1913. 
327 pp. 

41. Titchener, E. B. A Primer of Psychology. New York: The 
Macmillan Company, 1898. 314 pp. 

42. Waddle, C.W. An Introduction to Child Psychology. Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918. 317 pp. 

43. Walter, H. E. Genetics. New York: The Macmillan Com- 
pany, 1913. 272 pp. 

44. Warren, H.C. Human Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 
Company, 1919. 460 pp. 

45. Washburn, M. F. The Animal Mind. New York : The Mac- 
millan Company, 1913. 333 pp. 

46. Watson, J. B. Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. 
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1919. 429 pp. 

47. *Whipple, G. M. Manual of Mental and Physical Tests. (2 
vols.) Baltimore: Warwick & York, 1914-15. 365 and 336 
pp. 

48. Winship, A. E. Jukes-Edwards: A Study of Education and 
Heredity. 1900. 88 pp. 

49. Woods, F. A. Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty. 1906. 
312 pp. 

Reference is also made in the following lessons to the files of the 
American Journal of Psychology and of the Pedagogical Seminary; 
also to Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education. 



CONTENTS 

LESSON PAGE 

1. Introductory 1 

2. Methods of Studying Children 6 

3. The Nervous System: Stimulus and Response . . 16 

4. Lower Forms of Behavior 23 

5. Instinctive Behavior in Organisms below Man . 28 

6. Instinctive Behavior of Children 

1. General Physical Activity 33 

7. Instinctive Behavior of Children (continued) 

2. The Migratory Response 40 

8. Instinctive Behavior of Children {continued) 

3. Food-Getting and Hunting Responses .... 45 

9. Instinctive Behavior of Children {continued) 

4. Ownership and Collecting 51 

10. Instinctive Behavior of Children {continued) 

5. The Gregarious Instinct: The Gang 58 

11. Instinctive Behavior of Children {continued) 

6. The Play Response G5 

12. Instinctive Behavior of Children (continued) 

7. The Play Response (continued) 72 

13. Instinctive Behavior of Children (continued) 

8. The Fighting Response 81 

14. Instinctive Behavior of Children (continued) 

9. The Teasing and Bullying Responses; The 

Display and Approval Responses 87 

15. Instinctive Behavior of Children (continued) 

10. The Rivalry Response 05 

16. Instinctive Behavior of Children (continued) 

11. The Curiosity RESPOiNSE 102 



CONTENTS xix 

17. Instinctive Behavior of Children (continued) 

12. The Maternal Response 110 

18. Instinctive Behavior of Children (continued) 

13. The Imitative Response 117 

19. The Emotional Side of Behavior 

1. Emotions and Instincts 124 

20. The Emotional Side of Behavior (continued) 

2. Fear and Anger 131 

21. The Emotional Side of Behavior (continued) 

3. Love and Sympathy 137 

22. Heredity 

1. General Lesson 144 

23. Heredity (continued) 

2. Three Famous Laws of Heredity 150 

24. Heredity (continued) 

3. Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics . . . 159 

25. Heredity (continued) 

4. Studies in Heredity 167 

26. Heredity (continued) 

5. Studies in Heredity (continued) 175 

27. Heredity (continued) 

6. The Heritage op the Children 182 

28. Transition TO Learned Behavior: Environment . . 190 

29. Habit 200 

30. Habit (continued) 208 

31. Habit (continued) 216 

3^2. Sensation 223 

33. Perception 231 

34. Attention 238 

35. Attention (continued) 246 

36. Mental Imagery 253 

37. Memory and Imagination 262 

38. Thinking 269 

39. Will and Moral Development 279 

40. The Juvenile Delinquent 288 



XX CONTENTS 

41. The Sub-Normal Child 296 

42. The Gifted Child 312 

43. Individual Differences 321 

44. The Unstable Child 332 

45. Adolescence 3^q 

46. The Evolution of the Social Attitude toward Chil- 

I^REN 34gi 

Index 357 



LIST OF FIGURES 

1. A Neurone jy 

2. A Synapse J17 

3. The Sensory-Motor Arc .''19 

^. Mendel's Law 252 

5. Filial Regression 257 

6. A Family Record jYq 

7. The Triangle of Life 192 

8. The Fringe AND Focus OF Consciousness .... 239 

9. Exercise 6 from "Haggerty Intelligence Tests" 306, 307 

10. A Portion of the " Gettysburg Edition " of the Ayres 

Handwriting Scale 310311 

11. The First Few Lines of a Perception Test used in 

Connection with Whipple's "Manual of Mental 
AND Physical Tests " ^ 325 

12. A Portion of a Substitution Test from the JNIaterial 

Supplied in Connection with Whipple's "Manual 
OF Mental AND Physical Tests" 327 



PSYCHOLOGY 
FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

LESSON 1 
INTRODUCTORY 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Evidences of behavior as it is defined in this chapter. 

2. Greater complexity of response in older than in younger 
children. Try to classify several groups of responses in the 
observation class under the groupings thinking, feeling, and 
action. 

3. Children whose environment outside of school may be unfor- 
tunate. 

4. Any evidence that the teacher is endeavoring to select from all 
possible influences of schoolroom living only those which may 
have a beneficial influence over the behavior of the children. 

What psychology is. Psychology is the science which 
seeks to enumerate the chief facts of human behavior, with 
an attempt to account so far as possible for these facts. 
You have observed constantly in your daily associations 
with people that human life tends to express itself in terms 
of thought, feeling, and action. We may include all tliree 
of these types of expression under the single heading: 
behavior. Let us endeavor to analyze this word behavior. 

Behavior. But do not make the mistake of interpreting 
behavior in terms of its everyday significance. In popular 
phraseology, to behave means to conduct one's self in an 
exemplary manner. In psychology we must give the term 
a much broader significance. Behavior may be defined in 
this more inclusive sense as the response of our organism to all 
the situations which confront it or can ever confront it. In the 
following paragraph we shall see what some of these every- 
day responses are. 



2 PSYCHOLOGY FOR -NORMAL SCHOOLS 

The infant stretches out its hands to grasp the toy; it 
follows with its eyes the movements of the mother about the 
room; it coos with delight when it is comfortable; it screams 
when it is uncomfortable; it tries to place small objects in 
its mouth; its face shows fear when it is tossed into the air; 
its cheeks suffuse with anger when its privileges — real or 
fancied — are interfered with; it clings to the mother and 
shrmks from the stranger; it babbles and lisps incessantly 
during waking hours; it keeps its arms and legs in more or 
less continuous motion; it manifests unmistakable symp- 
toms of jealousy whenever another child is vouchsafed 
favors which it deems due only to itself; it creeps across the 
floor, when it is old enough, to explore a tempting object 
near by; it throws its toys gleefully from it, and then pro- 
ceeds to recover them almost immediately; its gaze is caught 
now by a sunbeam shimmering upon the floor, now by a bit 
of bright cloth, now by the charm dangling from a watch- 
chain; it stretches out its hands with equal conviction to- 
ward the moon or the star or its own face reflected in the 
mirror; it pulls its toys to pieces in order to investigate the 
fascinating mechanics within them; it plays with its pets, 
often becoming very rough, and with unhappy consequences'; 
it claps its hands ecstatically when especially delighted; it 
plays with its own toes and fingers and clothing; it pouts and 
laughs and cries by turns ; it alternates short periods of waking 
with longer periods of sleeping; it is now fretful, now cheer- 
ful; its attention remains but fleetingly upon any single 
object, seeking ever new experiences. All of these common re- 
sponses which you have observed again and again in infants 
in your own home or in the home of a friend belong properly 
within the meaning of the term behavior, as we have defined 
it above. * 

Behavior becomes more complex with increased expe- 
rience. You must also have observed that the older the 
infant grows the more active, or expressive, it becomes. In 
earlier infancy its responses were very limited. Can you 
tell why.?* But as it passes out of infancy and into early 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

childhood its range of responses becomes almost limitless. 
In later childhood its possibilities of expression expand still 
more, reaching their culmination only with the advent of 
complete maturity many years later. We may accept as 
self-evident the statement that human behavior becomes 
more and more complex with the increased experience which 
the passing years bring. 

The importance of childhood. In dealing, as you will, 
with the responses or behavior of children of school age (i.e., 
children between the ages of six and eighteen years) you 
will be contributing of your influence and personality to an 
epoch in human life which is perhaps the most significant of 
all — significant because within it in ever-increasing meas- 
ure the various responses to the influences which surround 
and play upon life are being solidified in such a manner that 
the whole subsequent unfolding and expansion of its powers 
will be after all but a reflection, a logical consequence, of the 
behavior habits and attitudes of childhood. 

We have said that a study of psychology is a study of 
human behavior. For teachers such a line of investigation 
and study is of special importance, for more perhaps than 
any other agency in the whole environment of the child, 
with the exception of the home, the school and the life of the 
school furnish the example and influence out of which the 
thinking, feeling, and action of subsequent life will resolve 
themselves. The child's behavior will, in other words, be 
but an expression in his own life of the influences which 
surrounded him. His habits, his attitudes, his whole mental, 
moral, and physical well-being or ill-being in maturity will 
be only the necessary response to the moulding forces which 
fashioned his early years. 

The value of psychology to the teacher. Psychology, or 
the study of these innumerable moulding forces, and the 
effect which they entail, has a double value for the teacher 
who is to aid in the directing of them. In the first place, it 
leads her to observe and study the nature of human be- 
havior; it introduces her to some of the great fundamental 



4 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

truths underlying all response, all behavior; it acquaints 
her with some of the tremendous influences upon the be- 
havior of mankind that are as old as the race itself. And in 
the second place, the study of psychology is of significance 
for teachers in that it is not satisfied merely in discovering 
or stating facts and principles of human conduct; it is con- 
cerned also with searching after the reasons or causes under- 
lying them. Hence universal causes or stimuli are come 
upon which, being observed to be true of those about us, 
may be assumed to be true of children generally. 

One of the chief ends of the study of psychology by teach- 
ers is, therefore, that they may derive from it trustworthy 
suggestion and assistance in influencing favorably the 
responses of children in their own schoolrooms. Psychology 
would both inform the teacher of the nature of the child 
mind, and also aid her to direct its unfolding with intelligence 
and sympathy. 

As a natural consequence of the study of human behavior, 
and the forces from which it evolves, the teacher will come 
to understand that whenever the moulding forces and ex- 
amples making up the environment of a child are unfor- 
tunate or vicious, the behavior of that child will be shaped 
accordingly. Similarly, she will discover that the reverse is 
true, and that moulding forces that are favorable will tend 
to exert a salutary and beneficent influence over the be- 
havior of children. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. What is meant by behaviorism? What is the relationship between 
behaviorism and psychology? 

2. Observe an infant for ten minutes, paying special attention to his 
responses of action. Make a written report of your observation. 

3. What years of life mark the limits of childhood? Of infancy? 

4. Why are the responses of infancy more limited than those of later 
life? 

5. What are some possible consequences of unfortunate influences in 
childhood? Of good influences? Be concrete in your discussion. Can 
you furnish actual illustrations from your own experience or observa- 
tion? 



I 



INTRODUCTORY 



THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Is it possible for such physical factors in the schoolroom as ventila- 
tion, temperature, lighting, seating, etc., to have any effect upon the 
behavior of pupils? Explain. 

2. What have you observed to be the effect of fatigue upon your own 
mental exercise? Might fatigue in school children influence their 
mental behavior? In what ways does the school endeavor to elim- 
inate the possibility of fatigue? 

3. How can the habits, tastes, prejudices, attitudes, etc., of a teacher 
find reflection in the behavior of the pupils in her charge? Can you 
trace any of your own qualities to the influence of a former teacher? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, pp. 1-3; 7-12. 

2. Breese, B. B. Psychology, pp. 1-6. 

3. James, Wm. Psychology (Briefer Course), chap. 1. 

4. Pillsbury, W. B. Essentials of Psychology, pp. 10-15. 

5. Titchener, E. B. Primer of Psychology, pp. 1-10. 

6. Watson, J. B. Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, pp. 1-8. 



LESSON 2 

METHODS OF STUDYING CHILDREN 

What to look for in the observation period : 

1. Any evidences that the teacher, as judged by the sympathetic 
attitude which she maintains toward the contributions that 
the children make to the lesson, is a good introspectionist. 
Is there, on the other hand, any evidence that she is the sort 
of teacher whom James had, as described in the Lesson? 

Behavior not a narrow term. We learned in Lesson 1 
that behavior is the response of the organism to the influ- 
ences with which one is surrounded. In this lesson we are 
to consider some of the major ways of studying these re- 
sponses. Before proceeding to do so, however, it is essen- 
tial that we appreciate thoroughly the point of view that 
behavior has as much a mental as a physical phase, and as 
much a moral as a mental one. It is evident, therefore, that 
logical thinking or keen imagining are just as truly types of 
behavior as are building a snowman or playing "Indian," 
and that telling an untruth or destroying the property of 
others is no more truly an aspect of behavior than is mem- 
orizing a poem or sailing a boat. In other words, as we have 
already seen, behavior is concerned with every physical, 
mental, or moral reaction made by the organism in a life- 
time. Psychology seeks merely to analyze and to endeavor 
to account for them. There are several Wjays of studying 
these responses, but we shall limit ourselves throughout this 
discussion to the three methods which can be used with 
most profit in the study of child mind. These are: intro- 
spection, experimentation, and observation. To consider 
each of these three methods briefly. 

Introspection. Suppose you are standing before a paint- 
ing of rare execution in an art gallery, such, for example, as a 
landscape of Corot or Raphael's Sistine Madonna. Suppose 



METHODS OF STUDYING CHILDREN 7 

now you try to analyze your response to the picture. You 
discover at once that something within you reacts pleas- 
urably or sympathetically to the situation. Your behavior 
expresses itself in part in terms of some fine emotion which 
is aroused. The scene before you may also call to your 
mind certain of your past experiences which have been 
such as to enable you to sympathize with the point of view 
of the artist and with his execution of the piece. A page of 
history, if the scene is an historic one, may flash before your 
consciousness, or the words of a poem commemorative of 
the event may reverberate again in your memory. Scenes 
and recollections from childhood may flood your mind once 
more; familiar faces may overcome you. And all this 
because you chance to pause before a masterpiece in a 
picture gallery. It becomes evident to you at once that 
your consciousness is a very complex instrument and capable 
of the widest possible range of excursion. In any attempt to 
analyze the experiences and the memories and the attitudes 
of the moment you find yourself necessarily looking inward- 

Now you will find that looking inward requires on your 
part a considerable amount of patience and skill if your re- 
sults are to be worth while. The human mind, save in its 
external expressions, is not something that can be dissected 
objectively with a needle ; it is not a thing that can be readily 
isolated and brought under conditions of objective experi- 
ment. It is rather an internal process at which you must 
look very painstakingly. And even in looking at it the 
process changes, for you can observe it only through the 
medium of its own manifestations. This makes introspec- 
tion all the more diflScult, so that in your own efforts to look 
inward you will need to exercise continual care. 

But how will introspection be of help to you in studying 
the behavior of children? You surely cannot set children 
to the task of introspecting! No, but you will be better able 
to understand and direct their behavior by being yourself a 
good introspectionist. After all we are more alike than we 
are unlike, and you will be often greatly helped in your 



8 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

control over and understanding of children by the ability to 
evaluate a definite situation in the light of your own past 
experiences in a similar situation. For example, at a certain 
period in the lives of young people there arises a deep in 
terest in collecting. It may be in collecting stamps or coins 
or post-cards; or it may be in collecting shells or milk-bottle 
caps or button-pins. Through introspective memory of 
your own earlier interest in such activities you will be in a 
position to guide the collecting interests of your pupils far 
more intelligently and sympathetically because you have 
learned to know yourself and your own childish interests 
and ambitions. Introspection, in other terms, makes a 
better teacher of you by making you a better observer of 
children and a more intelligent participator in their joys 
and sorrows. 

Perhaps the following illustration will make the point 
clearer. In a certain country school, located in the heart 
of an old Indian region, a teacher was recently conducting 
a lesson in United States history. There were some half- 
dozen or more boys and girls in the class, of an age some- 
where in the neighborhood of ten years. Toward the end of 
the lesson the discussion turned upon the types of weapons 
and other means of defense used by the colonists to protect 
themselves against the Indians. In the textbook were illus- 
trations of matchlock and flintlock guns, an old block house, 
and some Indian bows and arrows. Eagerly one of the boys 
in the class raised his hand. For a time the teacher seemed 
to avoid looking in his direction. It may have been inten- 
tional on her part, for she was perhaps aware of the child's 
deficiencies and had no wish to exploit them before a visitor. 
But his insistence was so obvious and compelling that at 
length she was obliged to give him permission to speak. 
"Well, James, what is it.?" James excitedly pointed to a 
picture in the book. "My father's got one of them guns up 
in our shed-chamber!" and the boy's face was aglow with 
conscious pride. But the teacher gasped. "How often 
must I tell you, James, to be careful of your English!" 



I 



METHODS OF STUDYING CHILDREN 9 

That was all ; not a word of acknowledgment or recognition 
of James's contribution to the lesson! Poor James shrank 
down in his chair, the eagerness of a moment before sub- 
merged in a deep hurt that was plainly apparent in his 
drooping head and ashamed face. 

Now you will understand better why introspective clever- 
ness is a virtue on the part of a teacher. James's teacher 
was not an introspectionist; she failed to see behind James's 
ungrammatical response the real impulsion that motivated 
him : she saw not the thing that James saw, but only the 
poor language in which it was couched. Her experience 
was too meager, and her memory of it too unreal, to enable 
her to appreciate and sympathize with the interests and 
longings of her pupils. By all means, then, beware of the 
failure of James's teacher. Cultivate this habit of analyz- 
ing your own mental processes to the end that you may 
better interpret those of the boys and girls for whom one 
day your cleverness in understanding will mean not only 
happiness, but mental growth and steady unfolding as well. 
Especially will you find it valuable to reminisce, so that 
you can reinterpret the experiences of your own childhood 
and turn them to account in your teaching of other child- 
hood. 

Experimentation. You recall readily enough from your 
study of general science that whenever you desired to 
analyze a chemical process you subjected that process to 
laboratory experimentation. Similarly, you were able to 
demonstrate a certain principle of physics to be true by 
regulating the conditions in such a way that it could be 
established at will. Now in psychology there are also 
immense possibilities in the field of experimentation, al- 
though for the same reason that makes introspection diffi- 
cult it is not quite such a simple matter as might at first 
appear. Still, by carefully controlling our experimenta- 
tion, and so ruling out all irrelevant or variable conditions, 
we can test out in the laboratory extensively what individ- 
ual introspection can only demonstrate to be true of one 



10 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

person — the subject. In the laboratory we can reproduce 
a given set of conditions at will, and so make possible a much 
wider and more extensive inquiry into human behavior. 
The number of subjects is conditioned only by the number 
of persons available for the experiment. Thus, by increas- 
ing the number of subjects, we can arrive ultimately at facts 
concerning human behavior generally which bear the stamps 
of scientific exactness. 

For example, suppose it is desired to determine the most 
economical method of learning a piece of poetry. It may 
be the belief of A that the m method is the superior one, 
while it may have been B's experience that the n method is 
more economical than the m. By ruling out all variable 
factors and establishing a set of constant conditions we can 
subject the difference of opinion to a definite test in the 
laboratory, and by multiplying sufficiently the number of 
observers or subjects we can determine not only which 
method of learning is the better for people in general, but 
we can also classify all observers, and therefore all learners, 
into their respective categories. 

For the average teacher-training course, however, it is 
found usually that there is not sufficient time to venture 
far into the field of experimentation, fascinating though it 
undoubtedly is. Indeed the technique of psychological 
experimentation, while distinctly invaluable as training for 
advanced work in the study of human behavior, is not in- 
dispensable for the teacher of children. Hence we shall per- 
force content ourselves in this book with the minimum of 
experimentation, remembering, however, that experimen- 
tation is possibly the most exact of all the methods of 
psychological research. 

Observation. The method of studying behavior which 
above all others is adapted to use with young people is the 
observation method. The material upon which as master 
craftsmen we are to work consists of children. This mate- 
rial is fortunately everywhere about us. We are not com- 
pelled to make either efiFort or sacrifice to obtain access to 



METHODS OF STUDYING CHILDREN 11 

it. It is to be found in quantity in the homes, upon the 
playgrounds, on the streets, and even within the school- 
room itself. We have but to observe it. 

Now you may have discovered already that not every- 
body is an accurate observer of the common incidents and 
objects in his environment. It not infrequently happens 
that two people react quite differently in their descriptions 
of a happening, or of a place or person or thing. The fol- 
lowing illustration will serve to throw this strange fact about 
human behavior into relief. It chanced recently that an 
automobile crashed against a telegraph post at the foot of 
a rather crowded street. In the accident one of the occu- 
pants of the vehicle was very seriously injured, and subse- 
quently succumbed to the shock received. The court which 
tried the case desired to establish the guilt or innocence of 
the driver of the automobile. But when the witnesses were 
summoned a curious lack of unanimity of impression was 
revealed. One witness stated that the automobile was being 
driven at a speed of approximately thirty-five miles an hour; 
another declared the speed to have been not in excess of 
fifteen miles an hour. One witness claimed that the injured 
occupant was hurled through the windshield and dashed to 
the ground; another declared that he was not thrown from 
the vehicle at all. All of the witnesses, notwithstanding, 
made their statements under oath. It is apparent that not 
all of them were accurate observers. It should be said in 
partial justification, however, that impressions made under 
stress of strong emotional experience, as was true of the 
accident described, are apt to be untrustworthy. Still, the 
fact remains that not all observers are dependable observers. 

Powers of observation are fortunately trained with prac- 
tice in observing. In a certain school building, over the 
main entrance there is a window of peculiar shape and 
arrangement of panes. It is semicircular in form, and glazed 
with red and colorless panes of various shapes and propor- 
tions. One day the teacher asked the children to draw from 
memory a diagram of the window. The most unreal and 



I 



12 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

fantastic designs were produced. Next day the same re- 
quest was made, and this time the children — most of whom 
had taken pains to observe the window more closely in the 
meantime — did much better. Still, few of them had yet 
observed the window accurately. But day after day the 
teacher repeated the problem until soon every child could 
reproduce very creditably on paper the shape, proportion, _ 
and relative size of parts of the entire window. Their I 
powers of observing were improving with practice. 

Things to be borne in mind in observing. There are 
several things to be borne in mind in observing children 
methodically, and it will be well here to make brief reference 
to some of the more important of them. 

(1) It is always the simple and natural reactions of chil- 
dren that are most valuable in furnishing us information 
about children generally. It is quite possible, of course, to 
encourage artificial or controlled response by injecting one's 
own personality prominently into the situation. For 
example, you might ask a six-year-old child whether it is 
wrong to tell a lie, or what his ideas of angels are, but there 
would be great danger of suggestion or constraint, inducing 
the child to respond more or less unnaturally. It would 
furnish a much more reliable side-light upon the moral 
natures of children merely to observe their behavior without 
introducing one's self too prominently. Be on the watch, 
then, for the free, spontaneous responses, rather than the 
controlled or artificial ones. You can obtain the sort of 
observations you are in search of, often, by stealing upon a 
child much as a hunter steals upon his prey; watch him from 
ambush, taking great care not to startle him; observe him 
with his playmates, or alone with his imaginative self; peer 
out upon him at his play or at his work; in short, keep him 
within range during the whole period of his waking life, and , 
even during the drowsy sleepy-time you can lie greedily and I 
eagerly in wait in the shadows of the nursery. Any effort, 
you will soon find, which you may feel disposed to make will 
repay you a hundred fold. 



METHODS OF STUDYING CHILDREN 13 

(2) Be cautious in not allowing the child to suspect your 
intentions. If he has any reason to doubt the disinterested- 
ness of an onlooker he at once becomes an artificial hehaver. 
It happened, for instance, not long ago that a group of 
young women students, after receiving scant preliminary 
instruction in the technique of observation, sought out a 
group of children and, pad and pencil in hand, began to 
quiz them with all manner of questions! Fancy the re- 
sponse which such a method elicited from the long-suffering 
boys and girls! These students, you see, were learning 
from experience to observe properly, as we have intimated 
above all teachers in training have to do. 

(3) But do not assume that pads and pencils have no 
proper place in the hands of an observer of children. To 
be most valuable as a finished and dependable piece of work 
a thing observed must be put on paper in order that it may 
become the property of other people than the observer him- 
self. Otherwise it is not knowledge in the strict sense of the 
term, for it exists only in the mind of one person. You 
should make it a rule, therefore, to write up your observa- 
tions as soon after making them as practicable. The reason 
for expeditiousness in this procedure lies in another principle 
of behavior which we shall study in due time: we tend to 
forget the details of an experience very quickly, or if we do 
not forget they become easily disarranged in consciousness 
and thus much of their true emphasis is lost. To provide 
against the destruction of the value of a reallj^ good obser- 
vation, therefore, you should take considerable pains with 
putting it into clear, simple language as soon as possible 
after its occurrence. Here is where your pencil and pad will 
indeed be of service, although in the interests of permanency 
it is always better to use a pen than a pencil! 

(4) It is possible either to study a single child intensively 
throughout a reasonable period, or to make constant obser- 
vation of groups of children in smaller or larger numbers. 
It is likewise possible to observe any individual child briefly 
whenever one chances to be at hand. Each of these three 



14 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

procedures has distinct value. In the first place, the long- 
continued, intensive study of a single child will afford the 
student excellent opportunity to note the progress and 
changes which mark the child's development, and she will 
perhaps gain more systematic insight into the nature of 
behavior than she would acquire from the incidental meth- 
ods. Secondly, the study of groups of children will demon- 
strate to the student not only the operation of certain of 
the social instincts, but also will operate to reveal to the in- 
vestigator something of the psychology of individual differ- 
ences, of which we shall have more to say later. In the third] 
place, the incidental method of studying a single child whoj 
chances along has the advantage of requiring less time,! 
and of offering a wider probable range of behavior to' 
observe. 

(5) Finally, the observation of children is worth while only 
in so far as, like every other subject of investigation, it is 
entered into earnestly and inquiringly for the purpose of 
actually getting information. The true scientist sets about 
his tasks without any preconceived notions, desirous of 
arriving at facts. This should be your ideal in the work 
which you are undertaking. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Why do witnesses of the same event frequently disagree? Can you 
illustrate the phenomenon from your own experience? 

2. Select some object from your environment during a quiet hour, such 
as a picture or a landscape, and try to introspect. Report your re- 
sults in writing. 

3. Whenever you chance to find yourself in a fit of anger or under stress 
of fear, introspect carefully with a view of determining the structure 
of your consciousness. 

4. Ask a friend to select from a magazine a colored picture possessing 
considerable detail. After you have carefully studied the picture, 
have the friend question you concerning its details, colors, etc. Re- 
port the accuracy of your observation. 

5. Review Miss Shinn's Biography of a Baby. This will give you an 
excellent idea of a careful study of a single child over an extended 
period of time. 



METHODS OF STUDYING CHILDREN 15 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Can an unsympathetic teacher be conspicuously successful in reach- 
ing and moulding the lives of boys and girls? 

2. If it is true that the observational powers of the average adult are apt 
to be wholly undependable, what should you infer to be the case with 
the fidelity of children's observations? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, pp. 5-6. 

2. Pillsbury, W. B. Essentials of Psychology, pp. 6-10. 

3. Waddle, C. W. Introduction to Child Psychology, chap. 2. 



LESSON 3 
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM: STIMULUS AND RESPONSE 
What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Evidences of distracting stimuli in the schoolroom, and the 
responses in the children which they arouse. 

2. Whether such matters as the location of the school building, 
(arrangement of rooms, etc., show any indication of attempt 

on the part of school authorities and architect to rule out as 
far as possible all distracting stimuli. 

The cell the unit of all living matter. You will remember 
from your physiology that the unit from which all organisms 
and all parts of organisms are evolved is the cell. It will 
perhaps be well, before we continue our inquiry into the 
nature of human behavior, to review very briefly the chief 
facts concerning the relation of the cell to the nervous sys- 
tem and of the nervous system to behavior, for it must have 
become apparent to you by this time that the pathway 
across which our human behavior finds expression lies withm 
us. This internal pathway is by no means a single route, 
but is made up of a great network of nerve cells and their 
processes which penetrate to every part of the organism, aiid 
link the parts up in such a way that unity of control results. 
For the purposes of clearness we may hken these nerve 
routes to microscopic telegraph wires running through in- 
numerable relay stations. 

The structure of the nervous system. The unit of the 
nervous structure is the nerve cell, just as the unit of bone 
structure is bone cell, or the unit of skin structure the 
epithelial cell. This nerve unit or nerve cell is essentially 
similar in structure to the bone or epithelial or other cell. 
That is, it contains a nucleus, a mass of protoplasm, and a 
cell wall, the whole mass being microscopic in size. Project- 






THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



17 



ing from the cells proper are multitudes of prolongations 
to which are given the name nerve fibers. Most of these 
protoplasmic prolongations branch and subdivide indefi- 
nitely; these branches are 
called dendrites. A few of 
them do not present such 
marked arborization and 
are much longer than the 
dendrites; they are called 
axons. The complete nerve 
unit — i.e., the cell and all 
its branches — is called a 
neurone. These neurones, of 
course, are microscopical- 
ly close together, and their 
processes or fibers interlace 
not unlike the upper foliage 
of juxtaposed trees. The no. i. a neurone 




synapse is the region where Showing dendrites and part of axon. A Is 

the nucleus; B,"' ' ' '^ '' 

drites; £>, axon 



the branchings from one '""^ "'^'''^"^^ ^'"^^ protoplasm; c, den- 



nerve cell appear to join 
other branchings from a similar unit. Whether there is any 
actual physical junction does not concern us here. It is 
sufficient to understand that in some way impulses travel- 
ing along one nerve 
bridge the gap, or 
synapse, and con- 
tinue along the ap- 
propriate neighbor- 
ing nerve until the 
end desired is at- 
tained. For the most part the nerve cells are grouped 
together in the central nervous system, that is, the brain and 
spinal cord. Occasionally, however, smaller masses, called 
gangha (singular: ganglion) are juxtaposed in other parts of 
the body where they can more conveniently control certain 
physiological functions. 




Fig. 2. A SYNAPSE 



18 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

The function of nerve fibers. In general the nerve fibers 
have three functions to perform in the physiological fur- 
therance of behavior. One group, which we may call affer- 
ent fibers, are for the purpose of receiving messages from the 
exterior sense organs, although many of them come from 
the internal organs of the body. The function which affer- 
ent fibers have to perform is, therefore, the first step in the 
niitiation of reflex action and of sensation, externally or 
internally aroused, smce it is these fibers which transmit 
outer or internal impulses to the interpretative centers 
withm the gray matter. We shall see in a later lesson just 
what we mean by reflex action, and how the afferent fibers 
can arouse both it and conscious response 

A second group of nerve fibers, called the efferentfibers, are 
those prolongations of the nerve cells which convey mes- 
sages away from the nervous system and into the muscles 
and glands, resulting in movement or action. The efferent 
fiber IS, therefore, the last nervous step in the production of 
reflex action; it is also the logical avenue through which the 
results of sensations are discharged into action or response. 
The efferent fibers terminate always in muscles or glands 

Supplementary nature of the afferent and efferent fibers. 
We are m a position now to understand the supplementary 
nature of the afferent and efferent fibers. According to 
their derivation from the Latin, afferent (ad and ferre) 
implies carrying toward, while efferent (e and ferre) implies 
carrying away from. And this is precisely the significance 
ot the two terms as used in the nomenclature of the nervous 
system One group brings sensations in from the exterior, 
while the other group projects movements outward to and 
about the exterior. The first group are, therefore, sensory 
nerve fibers; the second group are motor fibers. Take a very 
simple example of nervous response by way of illustration. 
Suppose a few grains of pepper are blown past the nostrils. 
Immediately you respond by sneezing - it may be several i 
times. What has actually taken place is this: a small group 
of afferent fibers ending in the nasal passages has been 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



19 




stimulated by the pepper, and at once the experience is 
flashed inward in the form of a sensation. Almost simul- 
taneously a group of efferent fibers reacts to the impulse 
brought in by the affectors and nearly every prominent 
muscle of the trunk is violently discharged. The term 
reflex arc, or sensory- 
motor arc, is often ap- 
plied to this simplest 
of nervous reactions. 
Can you suggest five 
other illustrations of 
this supplementary 
and immediate rela- 
tionship between the 
afferent and the effer- 
ent fibers? 

The adjuster neu- 
rone. We said a mo- 
ment ago that there 
are three functions 
which nerve fibers 
have to perform. We 
have already referred 
to two of them. The third is an intermediary function be- 
tween the work of the afferent and that of the efferent fiber. 
This third type is often spoken of as an adjuster, or asso- 
ciation, neurone. In the example just given, you observed 
that a far greater number of motor or efferent neurones 
must have been in discharge than sensory or afferent ones. 
The fact is that one afferent neurone makes connections 
with a great number of motor units by the intermediary 
of several adjustor neurones. In this way nervous connec- 
tions between a minimum number of sensory elements and 
a maximum number of motor elements may be secured. If 
now you will pause to reflect for a moment you will be 
overwhelmed with the tremendous possibilities of training 
not alone the faithfulness of the sensory neurones nor the 



FiQ. 3. THE SENSORY-MOTOR ARC 

A represents the sensory fibers carrying message 
inward to the central nervous system ; B, the 
synapsis between sensory and motor elements; 
C, a motor neurone lying in the ventral horn of 
the cord ; /J, axon projecting the motor impulse 
outward toward a muscle or a gland 



20 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

skill of the muscles, but especially of the association neu- 
rones which, on the higher level of intelligence and will 
represent the great physiological foundation of human con- 
sciousness and behavior. 

Stimulus and response. We have had occasion frequently 
thus far to refer to outside influences or forces playing upon 
us in determining our behavior. It is time now for us to 
become familiar with the terms stimulus and response, and 
to employ them henceforth in our discussion of behavior. 
In the example just given, the particles of pepper floating 
about in the air may be said to have been the stimulus 
which caused us to sneeze; in the same way the act of 
sneezing may be said to have been the response which we 
made to the stimulus. We assume, of course, that the con- 
nection between the stimulus and the response was effected 
by the adjustor neurones, but in our observation of children 
we are particularly concerned with studying the stimuli 
which influence them and the response which they make to 
them without attempting to trace internally the physiolog- 
ical circmts of their responses. Given the stimulus and the 
response we can calculate the part played by the adjustor 
mechanism with sufficient accuracy for our purposes. Let 
us look at some other illustrations of this same process of 
stimulus and response. 

Ulustrationsfrominfancy. When the mother moves about 
the nursery the eyes of the infant follow her wonderingly 
Her movements are the stimuli which produce the response- 
turning the head about. The same stimulus may also cause 
the infant to smile or cry, to prattle contentedly or to cower 
back in alarm, or to express itself in many other ways The 
opening of a door becomes the stimulus that causes it to 
respond by turning its eyes in the direction whence the 
sound comes; the sight of a toy impels it to stretch out its 
hands to grasp It; the lullaby song produces drowsiness and 
perhaps even slumber; the passing cat causes a hand to be 
outstretched to feel or caress it; sight of the bottle may nre- 
cipitate a great number of responses, all concerned with the 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 21 

taking of food; uncomfortable clothing incites to fretful- 
ness, as do also indigestion and physical ills. Can you ex- 
tend the list? 

Illustrations from adult life. A loud explosion causes you 
to jump, and perhaps cry out; a flash of lightning may impel 
you to close your eyes tightly, or to tremble in fear, or to 
indulge in compensating jest; a bitter or sour taste is re- 
flected instantly in a wry face, as is also an unpleasant odor; 
a pin prick causes you to straighten up quickly, and perhaps 
put the injured finger in your mouth; a thrilling discourse or 
sermon may incite you to this or that course of action; an 
interesting story will find unmistakable expression in your 
face, as will also an uninteresting one; a good example at 
a fortunate moment will encourage you to react creditably 
to a vexing situation. Try to think of a great many other 
illustrations from your own everyday experience of the 
inevitable sequence of response from stimulus. 

Professor James has very aptly applied the antonym 
impression and expression to such situations as mentioned 
above. Can you justify his statement to the effect that 
"there can be no impression without expression".? 

The basal condition of all response. From what we have 
said concerning the nature of the nervous mechanism it fol- 
lows that the behavior of children is a factor dependent 
wholly upon the stimuli of, adjustments resulting from and 
responses to their environment. Physical habits, mental 
attitudes, moral values are all conditioned upon these fac- 
tors. Here is one of the most basal of all laws of develop- 
ment. The influences and forces of surroundings, elaborated 
upon or worked over in the neurones of the great central 
nervous system, pass over into the sorts of lives we all lead. 
It is a transference of forces just as inevitable and just as in- 
escapable as life itself. On the physiological side our bodies 
receive food, reduce it to a usable state, and then it passes 
into movement and action and vitality. Just so on the ex- 
pressive side, the child's mind absorbs the stimuli offered, 
interprets it in terms of possible utilization, and then re- 
sponds logically and invariably to its impulsions. 



22 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Another pair of antonyms frequently applied to afferent and efferent, 
or sensory and motor, are centripetal and centrifugal. Account for 
the fitness of the two terms. 

2. Write out and bring to class a possible explanation of the activity of 
the sensory-motor arc in coughing, or in winking the eyes when a 
foreign body is precipitated near them. 

3. Observe an infant for ten minutes, and report upon his responses, 

4. Be ready to place on the blackboard and explain a diagram illustrat- 
ing the reflex arc. 

5. Study pages 26-28 in chapter 3 of Wm. James's Talks to Teachers, etc. 
Do you find confirmation of what you have studied in this chapter? 
Explain. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Every stimulus results in some manner of response. Can you think 
of any stimuli in the schoolroom which might tend to produce un- 
desirable responses or to interfere with the fixing of desirable ones? 

2. Would it be probable that the responses of pupils to a lesson which 
was lively, snappy and interesting would be more valuable than 
might be the case with a lesson that dragged and was uninteresting? 
Is interest, then, an essential if responses to stimuli are to be most 
enduring and worth while? 

3. To what extent is it an essential to unhampered and appropriate 
response on the part of a pupil that the terminals of all afferent fibers 
(i.e., the sense organs) be functioning normally? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, chap. 2. 

2. Stiles, P. G. The Nervous System and its Conservation, chap. 2, 

3. Watson, J. B. Psychology from tlie Standpoint of a Behaviorist, 
pp. 8-15. 



I 



LESSON 4 
LOWER FORMS OF BEHAVIOR 

Irritability of plants and lower animal organisms. It is 
well to pause here, before continuing our inquiry into the 
nature of human behavior, to refer briefly to some of the 
responses of lower forms of life; for behavior, in the sense of 
response to stimuli, is by no means limited to human beings. 
The sense organs of animals and the external surfaces of 
plants are alike subject to irritability; i.e., to stimulation 
arising from certain surrounding forces. Davenport classifies 
these forces as follows : (1) chemical substances; (2) water; (3) 
density of the medium; (4) molar agents; (5) gravity; (6) 
electricity; (7) light; and (8) heat. In other words, when- 
ever an irritable organism is subjected to stimulation from 
any appropriate one of these eight agencies, it responds in a 
definite way. This response is a form of behavior, whether 
it be a response made by a plant or by an animal organism. 

The tropism. The reactions made to external stimuli are 
far less complex in these lower forms of life than they are in 
human beings. The reason for this is obvious, since the 
responding apparatus — i.e., the nervous system — is highly 
specialized and highly complex in the latter, whereas in the 
former there is either no distinction between the afferent 
and efferent elements, or else the connection between the 
two is physiologically immediate and direct. For example, 
the slow turning of the sunflower to the progress of the sun 
across the sky is after all probably a relatively simple proc- 
ess, owing to the relatively simple structure of the sun- 
flower. 

The term most generally applied to such direct responses 
as these is tropism, a word coming from a Greek infinitive 
meaning to turn, and indicating in its derived significance all 
possible lower forms of response to the eight agencies men- 



24 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

tioned above. A few illustrations of tropisms will make the 
matter clearer. 

Phototropism. In the case of the turning of the sunflower 
always toward the sun we have an instance of what may be 
called phototropism, or turning toward the light. It is more 
correctly called heliotropism, or turning toward the sun. 
The stimuli are obviously the sun's rays, while the response, 
made possible by an irritable organism pervious to the 
chemical influence of the rays, is the constant turning. 
Another illustration of phototropism is seen in the moths 
which fly at night. You have seen scores of them attracted 
around the illuminated bulb, and perhaps even into the open 
flame to their own destruction. The explanation here is, as 
in the case of the sunflower, that the chemical elements of 
the moth's organism are responsive to the light rays from 
the lamp. In this case the tropic response may be posi- 
tively injurious to the life of the species. 

Geotropism. Another interesting variation of tropic 
response is found in geotropism, or the tendency of certain 
organisms to move toward or away from the earth. The 
first of these, the tendency to move toward the earth, is 
known as positive geotropism, while the tendency to move in 
the opposite direction has been called negative geotropism- 
Suppose, for example, you plant a seed in the ground. In a 
few days you will find the tiny shoots of the stalk pushing 
their way upward. If now you dig carefully around the 
plant you will find that its roots are burrowing deeper down 
into the earth. The first of these responses is an illustration 
of negative geotropism, while the second illustrates the 
opposite, or positive geotropism. It will be idle for us here 
to inquire into the explanation offered to account for the 
negative response, which appears to be a reversal of the law 
of gravity. The secret of it is hidden away in Nature's 
strong-box. It is not so difficult to arrive at a possible 
explanation of the positive response. In any case, the value 
of both types of geotropic response is at once apparent. 

The two sorts of tropism mentioned will be sufficient to 



LOWER FORMS OF BEHAVIOR 25 

help you to understand that the eternal law of stimulus and 
response, about which we studied in Lesson 3, takes its 
origin far down in the biological and botanical series, and is 
a form of inevitable behavior as old as the cell itself. Hu- 
man life, or human behavior, represents merely a more 
complex and variable range of responses, due as we said to 
the interposition of a complex nervous system and the in- 
creased possibilities of reaction thereby made possible. 

Automatic acts. It is true, however, that there are 
certain invariable forms of reaction to stimuli, even in 
animal life on the higher levels, which are more or less in 
the nature of determined responses; i.e., which appear as 
the inevitable reactions to certain stimuli and so are little 
higher than tropisms in degree of complexity. In fact, 
physiologically, about the only distinction between the 
tropic responses of the lower forms of life and the simpler 
responses in the higher organisms lies in the fact of the 
greater specialization of structure and muscular or glandular 
function in the latter. In the tropisms there is no evidence 
either of specialized function or of nerve tissue, the response 
being, as we said, a simple, direct, and inevitable adjust- 
ment due to chemical irritability. In human beings, how- 
ever, and in animals generally, are going on certain internal 
processes over which the brain exercises no control and 
which are in full operation from the earliest days of life. 
These are the so-called automatic acts, and include all such 
bodily functions as digestion, secretion, breathing, circula- 
tion of the blood, etc. Such acts result from internal stimuli 
rather than from chemical forces external to the organism, 
as was true of the tropisms, and have as their chief function 
the preservation of the physiologic processes upon which 
life and health are dependent. They represent, however, an 
aspect of response considerably higher than the tropism 
inasmuch as they are dependent upon relatively complex 
nervous structure for their operation. 

Reflex acts. A second type of human behavior on a low 
level may be included under the term reflex action. In this 



PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



1 



response the stimuli are external to the organism rather 
than internal, and produce periodic responses which are 
beneficial in protecting it from injurious forces originating 
outside of it. Among the more common reflex responses 
may be mentioned the winking of the eye to protect it from 
impact with a foreign body, sneezing, coughing, and the like. 
In the case of winking the eye, for example, the stimulus 
from without may be a particle of dirt, or an insect, or a chip 
flying toward one. The response is as instantaneous as it is 
effective. The lids are drawn hastily down and the delicate 
membrane of the eyeball within is saved from injury. Or 
again, suppose the wink has not been quick enough, or the 
object approaching has been too small to excite the customary 
response, so that the foreign body actually gets into the eye. 
Immediately it furnishes the stimuli for plunging the muscles 
of the eyeball, as well as the neighboring facial muscles, into 
violent and persistent reaction until the particle has been 
removed by the action of the tears which have also been 
reflexly released from the lachrymal glands. In this and in 
other reflex responses the higher centers are not called into 
play, but the lower centers take matters into their own 
hands, as it were, and incite the muscular and glandular 
responses. 

Both the above forms of behavior are relatively simple. 
The stimulus passes over directly into the response, the only 
difference being that in the automatic act it was an internal 
stimulus which set off the response, whereas in the true 
reflex the stimulus was supplied from the outside. But in 
either case it is the simplicity and directness of the ensuing 
response that are the important things: automatic and re- 
flex acts travel as a rule across the simpler reflex arcs. 

Instinctive response. But the sensory-motor arc is 
capable of transmitting far more complex responses than 
either the automatic or the reflex act. The next higher form 
of response is the instinctive response. Instinct is a very 
difficult term to define in its broadest and fullest significance. 
We may perhaps best describe instincts as being inborn ten- 



LOWER FORMS OF BEHAVIOR 27 

dencies to respond to definite stimuli in definite ways which 
are fairly typical for all members of the species, and with 
which there is usually connected some form of emotional 
experience. For example, consider the play of children. 
The play instinct is apparently inborn in all of us, and its 
satisfaction is a matter of intense pleasureableness to us. 
Take the child to the seashore and he becomes at once en- 
grossed in digging wells and tunnels in the sand, and in 
hurrying hither and yon with his pail and shovel. Take him 
to the playground and immediately his interests are divided 
between see-saws and swings and sand piles. Give him toys 
and he will amuse himself for hours with them. Set him 
down in the midst of other children and he will play so hard 
and so long that home and even supper are quite forgotten. 
What is this tremendous power which so rules the activities 
of the child.? Whence come*s it, and in what several ways 
does it manifest itself.'' These are questions with which we 
shall concern ourselves in the next few lessons. In the 
meantime, suflfice it to say that the instincts exert far more 
influence over the physical growth and moral and mental 
development of all of us than any other force in our lives, 
internal or external. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Describe two other kinds of tropism. 

2. Of what value to the organism are automatic acts? Mention a half- 
dozen such responses. 

3. Name some additional reflex responses. 

4. Describe what is meant in the text by "higher centers" and "lower 
centers." 

5. What is the important structural difference between organisms whose 
responses are called tropisms and those whose behavior is based upon 
instinct? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

Waddle, C. W. Introduction to Child Psychology, 94-101. 

Parmelee, M. The Science of Human Behavior, p. 81; also pp. 88-116. 



LESSON 5 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR IN ORGANISMS 
BELOW MAN 

Present stimulus and past experience. We describedl 
instinct in our last lesson as an inborn tendency to react in 
definite ways to definite stimuli. This tendency is no more 
peculiar to the human than it is to the lower animal organ- 
ism, although in the latter behavior is more or less hmited 
by structure. It has often been pointed out that an organ- 
ism's response must depend upon two factors — the present 
stimulus and past experience. Now in the case of all forms 
of life, higher or lower, past experience has been of tremen- 
dous importance. Take the bird family, for instance. We 
have no exact information as to how long birds have existed 
on the earth, but we do know that it has been a great many 
thousands of years, and throughout these long ages their 
organisms have been accumulating a vast fund of experience. 
We do not need to assume rational consciousness in the 
bird, however, to explain this slow and apparently purpose- 
ful accretion of experience. It is rather to be explained on 
the ground of natural selection. Suppose, for example, there 
had existed many thousands of years ago a large number of 
a certain species of bird. Suppose also that the climate of 
the region in which they lived suddenly became severe. 
Now doubtless many of them would have perished, but some 
of them, in flying blindly about, would chance to work their 
way into a region where the climate was milder. It is 
obvious that only such birds as succeeded in reaching a 
more equable climate would survive. The fact that they 
did succeed is to be explained on the ground of chance. 
But once having escaped the rigors of a cold climate there 
was doubtless registered in the nervous systems of the birds 
traces of their experiences, which natural selection seized 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR IN LOWER ORGANISMS 29 

upon and perpetuated, thus giving rise to the migratory 
instinct. You can now understand better why the past 
experience of an organism is one determinant of its present 
response. Can you think of another illustration of the 
development of an instinct from an original chance response? 
Why instinctive behavior persists. In the case of the 
instinctive response, then, the past necessities have become 
so indelibly stamped upon the nervous systems of species 
that they are now a factor in directing and ordering the 
existence of such species. And this is often the explanation 
of the survival in us of certain instinctive tendencies which 
appear no longer to be of value to us. Consider, by way of 
illustration, the instinctive response of collecting common 
among young children. At some time in the struggle for 
survival in the race it was an essential of continued existence 
to gather berries for sustenance and dry branches for warmth 
— so necessary indeed that the response fixed itself upon 
the human race as an instinctive reaction, although its per- 
sistence is no longer a physical necessity for living. In a 
similar way the tendency of the child to put objects into 
his mouth may be explained as the earlier compulsion of 
the race to test and try out all manner of possible edible 
substances. It appears, therefore, that what persists in us 
as instinctive tendency existed sometime in our unrecorded 
past as a necessity which formed the basis of the operation 
of natural selection. And it is to these instincts that we are 
now to turn our attention as offering in large measure the 
explanation of the present behavior of lower animals. 

Certain instinctive responses in birds. We have already 
referred to the migratory instinct. You have always been 
aware of the fall pilgrimage of many of our northern birds 
to the warmer southland, and of their subsequent return in 
the spring. The inner force which impels them to direct 
their flight invariably into the warmer south rather than 
the still colder north is, as we said before, due to the age- 
long modification of their nervous systems through natural 
selection. Exactly what share the present stimulus of 



80 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

increasing coldness has in their emigration we do not know. 
At most it is only very slight as compared with the force 
exerted by inner necessity, based upon a long past. Oftenl 
the same birds which emigrate in the fall immigrate again to ■ 
the same locality in the springtime, and it may have been 
your observation that the same songster which built his 
nest in your back yard last year returned this spring to the 
same tree, and perchance even to the same bough. It is a 
sort of homing instinct which is more or less intimately 
associated with the migratory response. 

Another instinctive form of response in birds is found in 
their nest-building. Certain species build always on boughs ; 
certain others build under eaves or in vacant buildings; still 
others choose always the tall grass or the swamps. Can you 
explain why the selection of each of these different sites for 
nests may have originated many bird generations ago.^* 

Y'ou have doubtless watched some industrious bird ab- 
sorbed in his nest-building. You noted the care with which 
he selected the bits of mud, or dried grass, or straw, or twigs, 
and the skill with which he wove all his materials together 
into a comfortable nest wherein might be laid and hatched 
the eggs which were to perpetuate his kind. And year after 
year — always at the appropriate season — the same nest- 
building instinct comes to the fore again. Some all-com- 
pelling force, some dominant inner compulsion, actuates the 
behavior of birds in a special manner during the nest-building 
and mating season. The response is higher than the chemi- 
cal response of the tropism, higher than the reflex, for the 
tropism and the reflex are immediate and direct. A rela- 
tively complex nervous system is rather the channel through 
which this higher, instinctive response operates. The di- 
rectness of the simple reflex arc is interrupted by the inter- 
position of many finer afferent, efferent, and adjuster nerve 
elements which make for more mediate and prolonged 
action. The modifications wrought in the nervous system 
by past experience serve to complicate the nature of the 
response. 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR IN LOWER ORGANISMS 31 

The Columbia River salmon. Professor Pyle records an 
especially interesting illustration of instinctive response as 
found in the life-history of the salmon. During the greater 
part of the year this fish haunts the region about the mouth 
of the Columbia River, but with the approach of the spawn- 
ing season the fishes begin to make their way up from the 
ocean's mouth to the quieter, more placid headwaters of the 
river many miles inland, apparently that the young fish 
about to be hatched may be safe from the deep-river prowl- 
ers below. Now the smooth course of the Columbia River 
is frequently interrupted by cataracts and torrential water- 
falls, down which the waters plunge seethingly. But the 
inner compulsion of the salmon is too great to permit of 
faltering. Gathering up all the energy in their muscular 
bodies they leap high upward out of the water in a blind 
endeavor to pass the foaming cataracts. If a first effort 
fails and they fall backward into the torrent, they swim idly 
about for a time in order to recover their energies; and then 
they make the great leap again and again until either they 
succeed in reaching the smooth water above or perish among 
the rocks and shoals of the rapids. It is said that at this 
season the Columbia is filled with the dead bodies of salmon 
floating down the river to the great ocean. 

What shall we say of a strength, a persistence, a necessity 
which impels these strange fishes to jeopardize even their 
lives in an endeavor to reach the quiet headwaters of the 
Columbia? You can appreciate now something of the 
insuperable strength of the instincts in lower organisms, and 
how blind and unmodifiable they are. 

Other common instinctive responses. But we do not 
have to go so far as the Columbia River salmon to find in- 
stinctive forms of behavior in the lower organisms. The 
self-preservative instinct, evident in the mouse scurrying 
to cover; the homing instinct of the pigeon or the horse; the 
food-getting responses of animals; the maternal instmct of the 
cow or the sheep or the mare or the cat; the play instinct in 
the pup or the kitten; the fear response of the fowl, hastening 



82 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

into the bushes at the approach of a hawk — all these are 
common types of instinctive behavior. Can you think of 
any activity of animals that has other than an instinctive 
basis? 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Be prepared to discuss the theory of natural selection or the survival 
of the fittest. (See reference 1, below.) 

2. Is the gang instinct, so common in boys, essential to the preservation 
of the race.' Can you explain its origin? 

3. What is the significance of the expression: "animal intelligence"? 
(See reference 2, below.) 

4. Give a possible explanation of how natural selection may have operated 
to impel the salmon to hatch its young in the headwaters of the 
Columbia River rather than at its mouth. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Jordan, D. S. Footnotes to Evolution, chap. 1, pp. 1-27. 

2. Morgan, L. Introdud ion to Comparative Psychology, chaps. 5, 7 and 20, 

3. Washburn, M. F. The Animal Mind, chap. 2. 



LESSON 6 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 

I. General Physical Activity 

What to look for in the observation period : 

1. Whether some children in the room are more active than 
others. If possible, attempt to account for an unusual amount 
of activity or of sluggishness on the part of any child or 
children. 

2. Evidences of the slower mastery of accessory movements 
than of fundamental. 

3. Whether the teacher tends to repress her children, or whether 
she strives sympathetically to encourage them to express. 

4. What sorts of sports or games or other forms of relaxation 
seem to be favorites at recess time. Is this as you would 
expect it to be from your study of Lesson 6.' 

Learned and unlearned behavior. We said in our last 
lesson that there is probably no other agency, internal or 
external, which exerts such profound influence over behavior 
as do the instinctive tendencies. We shall now proceed to a 
brief examination of some of the more prominent of these 
responses as they appear in the lives of normal children. In 
passing, it may be well to state that all human activity is 
divisible into two categories — learned and unlearned. By 
the former type we understand those of our reactions which 
are as they are because of the influence exerted over us by 
our individual past experience. For example, you can 
readily understand that your thinking, your attitudes toward 
problems of life, your ability to play the violin or operate a 
typewriter, are all modes of behavior resultant from your 
environment, and differentiate you personally at once from 
every other individual. Such forms of behavior are termed 
acquired, or learned, behavior. Can you think of several 



34 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

other forms of response which you make that are similarly th^ 
result of your own experience? 

We shall consider this higher aspect of behavior in due 
time. For the next few lessons, however, we are to concern 
ourselves with the unlearned, or innate, tendencies which we 
classified in the last lesson as instinctive behavior, that is, 
tendencies to behavior which are handed down to us through 
the experience of the race as opposed to any ephemeral 
modifications which we may personally exert upon our 
behavior in our own lifetime. 

We said in an earlier discussion that all behavior is con- 
ditioned upon two forces: the past experience of the organ- 
ism and the present stimulus confronting it. The first of 
these forces in order of development must be the past 
experience, not of the individual but of the race. In other 
words, two factors go to make up the content of the past 
experience of any organism: — first, the contribution of the 
earlier progenitors of the organism, which we may call the 
race; and secondly, the contribution of the present individ- 
ual. Professor Thorndike includes all possible racial experi- 
ences, unmodified by training, as constituting the original 
nature of man. By this, he means the pure, naked, instinc- 
tive responses of the organism before they are in any way 
changed or modified by the experience of the present indi- 
vidual. One of the most interesting as well as the earliest 
of these original, or unlearned, forces in the human infant is 
the tendencij toward general physical activity. 

General physical activity. If you were to attempt to 
enumerate all the physical responses of an infant during an 
entire waking day you would find when night came that you 
had a very remarkable as well as a very extended list 
Among the responses recorded would undoubtedly be the 
following: turning or shaking or nodding or tossing or 
wagging the head; turning the eyes about; exploring with 
the fingers of one hand the fingers of the other hand and the 
feet; grasping toys and small objects within reach; pulling 
tearing, twisting, and folding paper; putting all manner of 






INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 35 

small objects into the mouth, including, as we have seen, 
its own clothing or hands or even feet, kicking or tossing its 
feet and legs in the air; waving its hands and arms about; 
rolling its body from side to side; throwing its toys upon the 
floor; creeping or rolling upon the mat; manipulating and 
investigating and exploring toys and other available small 
objects; cooing, babbling, prattling, shrieking, and otherwise 
exercising the vocal organs (vocalization) ; rocking from side 
to side, and hitching the body backward and forward; 
rubbing and stroking and feeling (manipulation) ; squeezing 
and grasping and fingering; pounding and pressing and 
lifting; and a score more responses of a purely physical 
character. 

This great multiplicity of physical response appears to be 
nature's way of keeping the muscles in trim until such time 
as the child is physically able to play more actively and 
purposively. You have doubtless noted that the baby who 
is continually engaged in this random physical activity is 
usually the baby who is healthy and happy, whereas the 
baby who is quiet and sluggish in his movements is likely 
to be the baby whose condition of digestion, or nutrition, 
or general health is inferior. This same rule applies to us all 
more or less exactly. So long as we are in perfect health 
there is a natural exuberance, which is no longer so apparent 
when health becomes impaired and the body begins to 
deteriorate. 

Its origin in primitive life. If we look for an explanation 
of the origin of this tendency to general physical activity in 
primitive man, we shall arrive at the inevitable conclusion 
that in primitive life, beset as it was with perils, the period 
of infancy must have been very much shorter than is true in 
the case of civilized society, and that the human infant had 
very quickly to adapt itself to an environment in which food 
was scarce and natural enemies numerous. It must there- 
fore have been necessary for the infant to be physically com- 
petent to rely upon itself tolerably soon after birth, as is 
irue of most animals. The present instinctive tendency to 



S6 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

physical activity is therefore based undoubtedly upon an 
earlier necessity in the life of the race. 

Fundamental to accessory. An interesting question con- 
fronts us here as to the order in which these physical re- 
sponses develop. According to the physiological principle 
which states that all muscular control develops from the fun- 
damental to the accessory, which appears to be the commonly 
accepted explanation although it is variously interpreted, 
control over the larger movements precedes control over the 
smaller, more restricted movements; that is, the child learns 
to control the smaller muscles only after he has learned to 
manage the larger ones. It is very obvious, for example, 
that before you learned to play the piano with your fingers, 
you had first to learn to control the larger arm movements. 
If the baby chances to be brought near to the piano, it will 
manifest keen delight in drumming upon the keys with its 
fists; gracefulness and fineness of touch, however, will be as 
lacking as will critical appreciation of the sounds which are 
produced. We just said a moment ago that one of the char- 
acteristic physical responses of the infant in the cradle is the 
waving and tossing of its arms and hands in larger move- 
ments. True, it also fingers and manipulates its toys to a 
certain extent, but all its finger movements are awkward 
and ungainly in the extreme. This is, in itself, an illustra- 
tion of the same principle of priority of muscular develop- 
ment. The same backwardness in the development of the 
smaller, finer movements is seen in the growth of control of 
the feet. From birth on the child is more or less master 
of the larger muscles of his legs, which he can toss about 
incessantly, but it takes months of experimenting before he 
can learn to coordinate the same muscles in balancing, stand- 
ing, and walking, and months more before he acquires much 
gracefulness of locomotion. The same may be said of his 
vocalization. From its first hour, the infant is able to 
produce vocal sounds without number or measure, but it 
cannot coordinate all its vocal potentialities into articulate 
speech for many months, and it is years before it becomes 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN S7 

complete master of its voice in all the niceties and finish of 
what we may call speech. 

One other illustration will suffice. You may at one time 
have attempted to help a younger brother or sister to learn 
to write. If so, you can appreciate well how awkward and 
clumsy the child's hand is for many, many lessons, and how 
slowly it is that he succeeds in gaining a measure of control 
over the finer movements of his own muscles. During all 
this period of slow evolution, however, the same boy could 
doubtless run fast, play hard, and use his vocal organs to 
their very limit in the larger way. 

To say, then, that the order of development of muscular 
control is from fundamental to accessory means simply that 
the larger, fundamental movements are the first in order of 
development, while the finer, more artistic, or accessory 
movements do not come under control until somewhat later. 
Do not confuse fundamental and accessory necessarily with 
the size of the muscles involved. It is not so much that the 
larger muscles come first under a reasonable degree of con- 
trol: rather the larger, freer, less confined and restricted 
movements of these muscles evolve first. It is after all the 
same vocal cords, and the same arm muscles that come 
earliest under control as fundamentals that are concerned 
with later, finer responses as accessories. The change 
brought about by time and experience is brought about not 
so much by increased skill in using the smaller muscles 
(although in many cases that is a factor) as by increased 
skill in confining the larger movements into very minute 
ranges of contraction, as, for instance, in the case of learning 
to write. 

Childhood an age of activity in the larger sense. You 
have frequently heard quoted the old Puritanic saw, "Chil- 
dren should be seen and not heard." As though a child, 
filled to overflowing with the instinctive necessity to act 
could ever be expected to do otherwise than express himself 
in terms of activity! Do not expect too complete physical 
control, therefore, from your children. It is just as natural 



38 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

and just as necessary for the child to be heard as it is in- 
evitable that he will be seen. Not repression, but better and 
more sympathetic means of expression are what children 
demand. This does not necessarily mean that noise and 
clamor are the only forms of response possible in order to 
satisfy the inner impulsion to general physical activity — 
although by all means noise and clamor are periodically es- 
sential to healthy childhood. They are a sort of safety- 
valve to the exuberance within. What it does mean is that 
we need to make greater provisions for self -activity of chil- 
dren than we have felt needful in the past. Can you think 
of any recent developments in schoolroom practice which 
seem to indicate an increased appreciation of this need? 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. In what sense is "unlearned behavior" the learned behavior of the 
race? 

2. Observe an infant for ten minutes, bearing in mind what you have 
learned concerning the instinct of general physical activity. 

3. Compare the duration of the period of infancy in the cat, bird, horse, 
etc., with that in man. What has been the reason for the increased 
length of the period in the case of the human infant.'' 

4. How do skill, or dexterity, or gracefulness in any art or industry 
develop? 

5. Cite other illustrations of the "fundamental to accessory" principle. 

6. What is meant by self-activity ? 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. In what way is our knowledge of children's natural tendency toward 
physical activity being brought to bear upon schoolroom methods 
and educational aims? How have schools changed in this respect 
since our grandfathers' day? 

2. Why is learning to write apt to be such a laborious process? 

3. Why are drawing and manual training valuable subjects in the 
curriculum? To what end are such school activities as dramatiza- 
tion, pageantry, singing, declamation, etc., valuable in the training 
of boys and girls? 

4. Is there any mental corollary to the fundamental-accessory theorem? 
That is, do children grasp certain outstanding facts and principles 
before they can comprehend derived and intricate truths? Give 
illustrations. 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 39 



SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Norsworthy, N., and Whitley, M. T. Psychology of Childhood, pp. 
42-49. 

2. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original Nature 
of Man, chap. 1, also chap. 10, especially pp. 135-38. 



1 



LESSON 7 
INSTINCTI\TE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN (continued) 
2. The Migratory Response 
What to look for in the observation period : 

1. \Miether there is any evidence that the children are making 
in connection with any of their studies "mental pilgrimages of 
the imagination " of the sort mentioned in this lesson, 

2. Evidences of interest in the welfare of other peoples of other 
lands. 

3. Any aspect of the school life as the children know and live it 
which might tend to induce some of them to dislike school and 
perhaps play the truant often. 

The Wanderlust. We have aheady seen that the migra- 
tory instinct is a common form of response in birds. We 
are now to study evidences of the same response in human 
beings, and especially in children. This instinct has a 
periodic, seasonal appearance in birds, coming into promi- 
nence when the cold weather begins and recurring in the 
following spring when the north has become milder again. 
In human beings, however, the migratory response has to a 
considerable degree lost its seasonal aspect, and appears as a 
general and more or less permanent tendency to delight in 
migrating. Wanderlust, or love of wandering, is the very 
expressive term which the Teutonic tongue applies to this 
interesting form of behavior. 

Early manifestations in infants. Its earliest appearance 
in children is seen as far back in the life of the babe as 
it begins to manifest eagerness to explore the wonderland 
beyond its own dooryard, and many a mother has called 
and searched frantically throughout the neighborhood in an 
attempt to locate the three-year-old who has for a moment 
been left without surveillance. You have observed the 
many ingenious devices to "hold" very young children in 



I 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 41 

captivity within their own homes, from the primitive cord 
attached about its waist and fastened to a doorknob, to the 
kiddie-coop or the piazza bars! But in spite of all this effort 
and soHcitude on the part of the parents the babes often 
break leash and disappear from immediate view, for all the 
world like gleeful animals which have escaped from their 
keepers. Something of the same primitive delight in wan- 
dering is seen in the eagerness which infants and very young 
children manifest in being wheeled out in their carriages, 
although it is probable that they are quite as contented in 
being trundled up and down and back and forth in the 
same familiar street as they are when being conducted along 
new and unfamiliar streets. The explanation here is partly 
that they enjoy the rhythmical motion of the carriage and 
the changing prospect, and partly that to their somewhat 
sluggish perceptions there are always sufficient new and 
novel stimuli even in the same short street. 

Prominence in older children. But as the young infant 
grows older the strength of its migratory instincts begins to 
increase inordinately, and sometimes alarmingly. You are 
familiar with Mark Twain's inimitable creations of child- 
hood. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and you remem- 
ber how one day, in company with a boon companion, they 
stole away from home to seek their fortunes on the great 
sweeping Mississippi. It was a response as natural and 
normal for boys to make as breathing. The lure of the 
distant, the enchantment of the new and strange, the call of 
the unknown and the untried are motives of enormous 
driving force in the lives of children, and especially, it 
appears, of boys. It may not find its expression in launch- 
ing a raft on the Mississippi and sailing away to become 
buccaneers, but some less spectacular form of expression it 
does seek. You are familiar with it in boys who run away 
from school, or "play hooky," a form of behavior springing 
quite as much from the inner call of the woods, or the field, 
or the stream as from lack of sympathy with the work of 
the school. You are familiar with it, too, in the frequent 



42 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 



recurrences in some children whom you doubtless chance to 
know of running away from home. Often this absence from 
the home may be of very short duration — perhaps an hour, 
two hours, half a day. Frequently, however, children with 
unfortunate home influences or bad gang influences may be 
missing for days, and even weeks. You have probably seen 
in the newspapers, on more than one occasion, accounts of 
some "lost" child who has heard and heeded the inner call of 
the distance. There are frequently cases of boys "jumping " 
freights, and actually visiting distant cities and remote parts 
of the country before they are apprehended and brought 
back to anxious parents. 

But even in the case of those less impulsive children who 
neither run away nor "play hooky," but remain quietly 
and happily in their homes or schools, it is nevertheless true 
that the Wanderlust is every whit as strong. It seeks its 
expression, however, not in physical migrations and pil- 
grimages, but rather in mental pilgrimages of the imagina- 
tion. I once knew of a boy who lived ^in a quiet country 
valley which was quite hemmed in by a very high range of 
hills. Often in his dreamy moments, when he had tired of 
his play, he would muse upon the sort of people who lived 
beyond the hills. In his fancy the boys and girls and 
grown-ups who lived on the other side must be quite differ- 
ent in their activities from the way of living with which he 
was familiar, and he dreamed of one day traveling beyond 
the hills and living among the enchanting people of his imag- 
ination. So it is with children. Books and tales of differ- 
ent places are always interesting to them; pictures of the 
children and people and animals of other lands enthrall 
them; stories of travel and adventure hold them spell- 
bound; and if their environment fails to satisfy them in pro- 
viding such stories and pictures and tales their fancy comes 
to their aid and paints the great outer world in roseate hues. 

Perhaps you can still recall your first long trip on the 
train. If you were six, or seven, or eight at the time, how 
wonderful the world appeared to you! And how deliciously 



1 



I 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 43 

satisfying to your fancy were the swift-speeding cities and 
towns as you were borne hastily and enchantedly through 
them! Does not memory of that red-letter day still unfold 
to you like a happy dream? 

Are adults subject to it? In mature life, too, it is not 
difficult to find evidences of the persistence of the migratory 
instinct. You may have heard of or actually known of 
families who were content in one street but a short time, and 
who were continually moving from place to place, and per- 
haps even from one town to another. In a similar way 
everybody likes to travel, either in the home country or in 
the countries beyond the ocean. It is a pleasing way of 
satisfying the migratory promptings within us, and we 
Americans are probably the greatest travelers in the world. 
It seems to be a law of life that those nations who labor 
intensely must also relax intensely. Yielding to the migra- 
tory instinct in this way is a pleasant form of relaxation. 
Then, too, there are the tramps, or professional wanderers, 
who have chronically given themselves over to the prompt- 
ings and the inner strength of the Wanderlust, and find con- 
tentment only in seeking ever new scenes. In the gypsies 
we have the strange phenomenon of an entire race or tribe 
wandering always over the face of the earth, their home 
wherever their tents chance to be pitched. 

Origin of the migratory responses. In primitive life, as 
we have already seen, those responses which are now instinc- 
tive were in some vital way necessary to the preservation of 
the race. It is easy to understand how essential the migra- 
tory habits were to the continued existence of the tribe. 
In an age when nothing was known of agriculture the food 
supply could be replenished only by seeking a new source. 
Hence, as rapidly as the edible materials in one locality were 
disposed of, it was necessary to move into more plenteous 
regions where the land flowed anew with milk and honey. 
The migratory instinct as we know it to-day is the trace left 
in the nervous system of the nomadic life which was neces- 
sary to the early development and perpetuation of the race. 



44 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



1 

nneiT^ 



Fundamentally then the food motive underlies this inne: 
tendency in human behavior to-day. It may be after we 
have studied the origins of some of the other great instincts 
that we shall conclude this same food motive to be at the 
basis of most human instinctive behavior. Was it so in the 
case of the tendency to general physical activity about which 
we studied in the last lesson? 

TROPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Recall instances of your own "running away from home" when you 
were very young. What motives prompted you? 

2. If there are older children in your home (i.e., children between say 
ten and fourteen years of age) observe whether any of their favorite 
stories are classifiable under the heading "travel stories" or "adven- 
ture stories." 

3. Watch the daily papers for accounts of "lost" children, and the possi- 
ble motives underlying their "disappearance." 

4. Do you know of any families who are very strongly possessed of the 
migratory instinct? 

5. What do you know concerning the Bedouin tribes of the desert? 

6. If people are subject to the Wanderlust, how do you account for the 
fact of their being homesick after they have left familiar scenes be- 
hmd? 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. What would be some wise provisions on the part of teachers which 
might tend to turn aside the call of the Wanderlust? 

2. Have such influences as school moving pictures, school libraries, etc., 
any restraining effect upon the natural thirst in boys and girls after 
adventure and excursion amid new scenes? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Kline, "Truancy as related to the Migratory Instinct"; in Pedagogical 
Seminary, vol. 5, pp. 381-420. 

2. Norsworthy, N., and Whitley, M. T. Psychology of Childhood, p. 299. 

3. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original Nature 
of Man, pp. 55-57. 



LESSON 8 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN (continued) 
3. Food-Getting and Hunting Responses 

Origin in primitive life. We suggested in our last lesson 
that the ultimate origin of the greater part of human be- 
havior might be found to be connected with the response of 
food-getting. In primitive life, as we said, it was very neces- 
sary for man to lead a nomadic life in order to be always 
where the food supply was dependable. Not only must a 
sure and unfailing source of food be constantly in prospect, 
but once having arrived in a region of plenty it was necessary 
for man to experiment more or less in order to determine 
what plants or animals were good to eat. It is not unlikely 
that in the early history of the struggle for survival many 
human beings perished from the consumption of poisonous 
food. If so, natural selection permitted only those individ- 
uals who chanced not to eat the dangerous foods to survive, 
together with those who chanced to eat sparingly of them, 
suffered accordingly, but did not succumb as the result of 
the experience. It was always in some such blind, acci- 
dental way as this that the race in its infancy learned slowly 
to protect itself against the dangers that lurked on every 
hand. The origin of the food-getting instinct of children, 
which we are about to study, is to be found in the necessity 
which compelled primitive man to seek out and try all 
manner of possible foods. 

Evidence in animals. If you are aware at all of the food 
preferences of animals, you are familiar with their remarka- 
ble keenness in analyzing available food particles. The horse, 
for example, nibbling the green grass, learns very quickly 
to avoid taking into his mouth the bitter dandelion or the 
tasteless herb, or, if he does chance to bite them off, he is 



46 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



n 



very adroit in spewing them out before they have had 
opportunity to become mingled with the sweeter grass in 
his mouth. In a similar way a chick will at first peck at 
particles of grit as well as of food, but very shortly will 
respond by refraining from pecking at anything which is of 
doubtful value as food. Now in both these cases the original 
tendency was to introduce almost everything available into 
the mouth, regardless of whether it could be assimilated by 
the system or not. The derived responses — i.e., the re- 
sponses modified by experience — do not interest us at this 
point, for we are inquiring into the nature of the original 
food responses. 

Survival in the human infant. In the human babe, well 
fed and surrounded with every physical comfort, this same 
food-getting response, though no longer necessary for sur- 
vival, still persists. Sight of any small object, such as a toy, 
is the stimulus which prompts the hands to grasp it, ma- 
nipulate it, and, very likely, introduce it into the mouth. 
Many students of childhood have observed that during the 
teething period infants are particularly eager to get hard 
objects into their mouths in order to assist in the eruption 
of the teeth. It is doubtful, however, whether this is the 
primary motive in the act of introduction. Thorndike 
suggests that the instinctive tendency to put things into 
the mouth is a response blended with the manipulative 
instinct. 

But we are not so intimately concerned here with theories 
and explanations of origin. It is behavior itself which m- 
terests us. There seems to be no limit to the number or 
variety of objects which very young children try to introduce 
into their mouths. The response is apparent from the very 
first in the movements of the child's lips and hands to grasp 
the source of food. From this original appearance the re- 
sponse soon broadens out to include masticatory attempts 
upon a considerable number of objects, and for the first two 
years or so of the infant's life the mother has to concern 
herself very carefully with seeing to it that there is nothing 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 47 

near the baby which may become for it a source of danger. 
Clothing, hands, feet, rattles, dolls, paper, corners of books, 
bits of wood, string, yarn, coins, thimbles, and a score of 
other things are grasped and carried to the mouth by the 
omnivorous infant. Sometimes, too, sharp or pointed 
objects may find their way into the eager mouth, and you 
have perhaps known or heard of babes who had actually 
swallowed a pin or a needle, with disastrous consequences. 
As a rule the habit of sucking the finger, observable oc- 
casionally in older children and sometimes in adults, origi- 
nates in the persistence of the infant in introducing its 
fingers into its mouth. In order to satisfy this craving on 
the part of the inquisitive infant, one occasionally still finds 
mothers and nurses who provide so-called "teething-rings" 
for the soothing and satisfying of their babes! Why is the 
practice a pernicious one? 

In adults. In older children and adults, besides the habit 
of putting the fingers in the mouth, one can observe other 
outgrowths of the infant response. The habit of putting 
the pencil into the mouth originates, for example, probably 
quite as much from the instinctive tendency as from the 
desire to moisten the lead in order to make the writing stand 
out more sharply. Smoking a cigarette or a pipe may also 
be to a certain extent the expression of this same primitive 
response. Gum-chewing and the craving for candy, so 
prominent in young people, have doubtless a similar basis. 
There is undeniably satisfaction up to a certain point in 
having agreeable substances in the mouth — quite apart, 
of course, from any need which the body may have for 
additional nutriment. Beyond that point, however, the 
system may rebel violently against a continued toleration of 
the substance, at least for the time being. 

Hunting. Joseph Lee, in his inspiring volume entitled 
Play in Education, dubs childhood "the Big Injun Age." 
Big Injun Age it is indeed, and perhaps nothing more truly 
justifies the appellation than the hunting response. Every 
boy, as you may have observed, passes through a distinct 



48 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

bow-and-arrow age. It is a time when no available sources 
of strong bows and straight arrows are left unexplored. One 
of the most delicious of experiences which boys can possibly 
have on a Saturday or holiday afternoon, is the trip to the 
woods after small animals or "Indians." You have seen 
this same hunting response manifested in the great fascina- 
tion which firearms possess for young people. If you were 
to question a goodly number of boys, eight or nine or ten 
years of age, as to what kinds of toys they prefer, probably 
you would find the bicycle and the air-gun occupying promi- 
nent places in their minds. It is not necessary actually to 
"hunt" in order to give expression to the "hunting" in- 
stinct. It is enough to build camps, or "shake-downs," or 
"lean-tos" in the woods, to haunt the groves, to play hide 
and seek, to shoot at targets with sling-shots or air-guns, or 
with stones, to delight in games of chase and pursuit, to lie 
in wait for one's chum behind a sheltering wall or fence and 
then to spring suddenly out upon him as he passes all un- 
suspectingly, to search after spruce gum among the spruce 
trees, to seek out the ripest berries or the shadiest grove — 
all these are variations of the hunting response in children. 
Is the response more common in boys than in girls? If so, 
canyon tell why? Enumerate other examples of the hunt- 
ing instinct. 

In adult life the response still exists just about as strongly 
as it did in childhood. Witness, for example, the man who 
lives but for the annual return of the him ting season. Pause 
to consider how many deer and partridge and rabbits fall at 
the crack of the huntsman's gun every fall and every winter. 
It is the call within of the primitive, and the response to it 
is full-hearted and complete — not that there is need for 
game so much as that there is an inner deliciousness in track- 
ing the animal into his lair. 

In the lives of the animals themselves the hunting instinct 
plays naturally a very prominent part. In the case of the 
wild animals especially, food may be obtained by preying 
upon other and weaker or less flleet animals. It is nature's 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 49 

eternal law of struggle for survival. What have you read 
concerning the method of hunting employed by certain wild 
animals? Even in the case of the domesticated dog and 
cat, both of which are well fed and do not need to hunt, it is 
the common observation of every one that the former prowls 
about walls and fields and marshes in search of wood- 
chucks, while the latter is the greatest natural enemy with 
which the rodents have to contend for survival. Thus, even 
in our more common domesticated animals of the lower or- 
ders, the call of the primitive is still insistent. 

Origin of the response. The origin of the hunting re- 
sponse in primitive human life is quite apparently to be 
found in the continual searching after food which motivated 
primitive behavior almost in toto. As soon as the bow and 
arrow had been invented, man had in his possession a 
powerful weapon. Hitherto he had been obliged to depend 
upon either the strength of his muscles in a personal en- 
counter with animals, or else upon the doubtful method of 
hurling rocks or stones among them or setting snares for 
them. But armed with the bow and arrow he could lie in 
wait and hope successfully to match his skill with the 
strength and agility of animals at some distance. The keen 
interest which boys manifest in hitting and throwing and 
shooting, as well as in the attendant camping and chasing 
and hiding, is rooted, like all other innate responses, in 
primitive necessity. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Observe an infant for ten minutes, paying special attention to its 
tendency to introduce small objects into its mouth. 

2. Plan to observe carefully the people with whom you are associated 
throughout an entire day for the purpose of discovering whether it is 
common for adults to put pencils, penholders, and other small objects 
into their mouths while thinking or reading, or to keep their hands or 
fingers much of the time in the vicinity of their mouths. 

3. Report on your observations of the hunting response in boys of your 
own neighborhood. Do the girls show tendencies toward the same 
sort of activity? If not, can you explain why? 



60 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



1 



4. Can you cite any evidence to show that boys are interested in bows 
and arrows, air-guns, and other toy weapons? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Lee, Joseph. Play in Education, chap. 26. 

2. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original Nature 
of Man, pp. 50-53. 



LESSON 9 
INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN (continued) 
4. Ownership and Collecting 
What to look for in the observation period : 

1. Any evidence that the teacher is taking advantage of the 
collecting or ownership responses of her children. For ex- 
ample: Is there a school museum? Is stamp collecting or 
picture-card collecting encouraged in connection with the 
work in geography, history, etc.? 

2. Any evidences of pride on the part of a child over something 
that is his, or his father's, or his brother's. 

3. Whether the children are buying thrift stamps, putting 
money in the "school bank," etc., and if so, note the pride 
which they are taking in thus adding to their possessions of 
value. 

Children's collections. If you were to examine the con- 
tents of a ten-year-old boy's pockets — and did you ever 
stop to think why it is that boys have so many pockets? — 
you would doubtless find that they contained a surprisingly 
heterogeneous collection of small articles, ranging from a 
fish-line to a bit of string, and from a smooth stone to a 
pocket mirror, or a collection of nails and screws to a ring of 
nondescript keys. The actual number of objects would 
doubtless be as surprising to you as their unrelatedness. 
In this lesson we are to inquire into that fascinating aspect of 
the child's original nature which seeks satisfaction in col- 
lecting and assembling all manner of transportable articles 
in the environment. 

It may be that you yourself recall vividly the many 
pleasant hours which you spent in amassing great quantities 
of attractive articles, and in playing with them or talking 
them over with boon companions of childhood. If you have 
such memories — and who of us has not? — you will ap- 



62 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

predate better the great, impelling force of the collecting or 
ownership response in young children. The attractiveness 
and charm of collecting lie apparently not in the intrinsic 
value of the objects accumulated, but rather seem to reside 
in the sheer pleasurableness of owning and in the sheer 
pleasurableness of accumulating. If you will recall your 
own collections made in early youth you will probably agree 
that there was little real value in the objects themselves. 
You will recall also that the delight in collecting and the joy 
in exhibiting were extremely satisfying. 

Stamps and coins. Perhaps one of the outstanding facts 
about children's collections is to be found in the wide range 
of objects which they embrace. Common among the arti- 
cles collected universally by children are stamps. It would 
perhaps be difficult to determine in how far the collecting 
of stamps satisfies the collecting and ownership instinct 
merely, and in how far the migratory instinct is appealed 
to by the possession of stamps of other countries with strange 
faces or buildings or scenes engraved upon them, and bear- 
ing a language unknown and for that reason all the more 
interesting. Certain it is that both responses find satisfac- 
tion in the collecting of foreign stamps. But even the every- 
day home stamps offer an attractive field of effort, and you 
doubtless know of many a boy or girl who is anxious to re- 
move the stamp from the incoming letter before even the 
postman has dropped it in one's eager hands. The writer 
knows two boys who have their regular weekly "soaking- 
off " day every Saturday morning, when all the accumulated 
letter corners of the past week are thrown into a pan of 
warm water and stirred about until the stamps can be 
satisfactorily slipped off the under paper. Following this 
process comes the "drying" stage, wherein the dripping, 
sticky stamps are spread carefully out on a board, face down- 
ward, to dry. After this process is completed they are 
deposited in a supply box until such time as they have ac- 
cumulated into a sizable mass, when they are sorted and 
tied up in neat bundles containing one hundred each ! What 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 53 

a deal of work, and what a calamity of sticky hands and 
soiled blouses and stained fingers! But it matters not: 
possessions are increasing hourly. 

Another article enjoying much favor on the part of youth- 
ful collectors of the more enterprising sort is the old- 
fashioned coin. Happy the boy who chances, in some waste- 
filled or forgotten attic or chimney-closet, upon two or three 
coins in current use when his father or his grandfather was 
young. Forthwith they become the nucleus about which 
other and yet other coins of ancient date begin to accumu- 
late, and aunts and uncles and neighbors are interviewed 
eagerly with the invitation to aid in the amassing of the 
legal tender of yesterday. Occasionally, too, although not 
so frequently as in the collecting of stamps, a boy chances in 
the full heat of his collecting ardor upon an old Mexican 
coin, or perhaps a coin from some land beyond the sea. At 
once his conspicuous property makes for him an assured 
place in the hearts of his comrades, and he comes to enjoy 
unwonted prestige among them by virtue of his possessions. 

Girls' collections. Among girls as an article frequently 
and commonly collected, paper dolls perhaps deserve first 
rank. Often the latest family magazine is little more than 
delivered when the ubiquitous scissors snip from it the 
fashion plates, to the end that the supply of dolls may be 
increased. Catalogues of mail-order houses share a like fate, 
as do also fashion sheets and posters. One girl numbered 
among her dearest treasures several hundred of these dolls, 
representing in their designs every age and condition of life, 
both at home and abroad. She kept them tucked carefully 
between the pages of large books, and when the books 
bulged out so far that the covers would no longer remain 
closed, she collected all manner of large envelopes wherein 
she deposited the weekly toll from her several sources of 
supply. Many and many the happy hours that the child 
passed either by herself or in the appreciative but envious 
companionship of her playmates in playing with her treas- 
ures. What with changing and rechanging the dolls' 



54 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

dresses at least a dozen times a day, matching becoming hats 
to them, and crooning happily all the while, the days were 
all too short for her. 

Of com-se real dolls are preferable to paper dolls, and often 
you will find girls seven to ten years of age who possess a 
score or more dolls in various stages of preservation and 
decay, yet equally loved withal. One girl whom the writer 
knows well possessed at the tender age of eight years no 
less than thirty-two dolls, each one of which had a full name 
which she could properly call as invariably as she could the 
names of her playmates in the flesh. The fundamental 
instinct lying beneath this love for dolls is another which 
we shall study in due time — the maternal response — but 
in this case, as so often, the joy of collecting and possessing 
was so mingled with it that one could hardly say which was 
the stronger. 

Development of the response. The first evidence of the 
ownership instinct comes with the cry (or the act) "Mine, 
mine!" in the very young child. Not infrequently the pos- 
session idea is so strong and so selfish that infants refuse to 
permit other children to touch or handle their toys, and take 
selfish satisfaction in enjoying them alone. This is espe- 
cially likely to be the case in one-child families, where there 
is no common ownership of toys such as there is in families 
where there are several children. In the latter, incipient 
generosity may be noted in the comparative indifference on 
the part of all as to who owns the toys. Still, even in such 
cases, the instinct expresses itself in other ways, and rarely 
does one come upon a child who fails to pass through a dis- 
tinct and long-continued developmental period in which one 
of the strong forces exerted from within is the passion to col- 
lect and to own. It may be nothing more than shells at the 
seashore, or tiny, colored stones, or horse chestnuts, or mar- 
bles — but there is sure to be something. Even the pride 
which a five-year-old takes in a new dress, or a pair of new 
shoes, or a ribbon which is hers is in part at least traceable 
to the passion to own. And so the instinct grows and de- 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 55 

velops with the dawning of childhood and childish interests. 
Led on in part by another instinctive force, curiosity, the 
collecting response comes often to occupy in a child's Hfe, 
for months at a time, a most prominent place. 

Nature collections. Occasionally, too, interest in nature 
exerts a profound influence over the collecting instinct. 
This interest impels the juvenile collector to hie him away 
to the woods or the fields or the parks or even into the back 
dooryard — and how much finer opportunity the country 
boy or girl has than the city child! — to gather and press 
daisies and violets and other wild-flowers; to seek out leaves 
of the finest texture, and all shades of green or glow; to chase 
the fleet- winged butterflies or to attract the larger, light-lov- 
ing moths at night-time. One child dearly loved by the au- 
thor had chased and mounted more than nine hundred but- 
terflies and moths before she was fifteen years of age. And 
then there are the animals and insects in which boys particu- 
larly often manifest much interest. You doubtless know of 
many boys of your acquaintanceship who take great pleasure 
in their rabbits or white rats or tadpoles, or even grasshoppers 
and lightning bugs. It need hardly be said that collections 
of this sort possess a high educational value. If young 
people are made into nature lovers when they are young they 
will be likely to find in natural things an abiding satisfaction 
and source of enjoyment when they grow older. And yet, 
how few real nature lovers there are among children in these 
days of moving pictures and indoor amusements! 

Quite apart from the educational significance of the col- 
lecting instinct, however, is the impulse to get, to obtain, to 
find out, to compare and contrast, to test and experiment, 
to search diUgently and labor indefatigably. If in some 
magic way you teachers could seize upon all these internal 
compulsions of young people in your actual teaching, what 
transformations you would work in them! If you could 
command the hours of patient search and attention which 
they give freely and eagerly in their collecting, you might 
well be satisfied. After all, nature is the better teacher. 



56 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

Young people are very active and very curious, — as we 
have seen; what greater driving force could one wish for? 

Waning of the collecting passion. It is an interesting 
sequel to all this amassing of childhood's treasures that 
interest in them largely ceases with the coming of youth. 
Then the limited interests of childhood are swallowed up in 
the limitless horizon which opens to reveal the whole world 
to the eager gaze of the adolescent. There is always a ten- 
der spot in the heart for the pleasures and interests of child- 
hood, but the wider interests of maturing perceptions and 
ideas come to take their places, and the individual grows. 
Only the sub-normal continues to play with his toys and 
trinkets of childhood: his normal, natural, evolving play- 
mate puts away childish things and becomes, first a youth, 
and afterward a man. 

Where did the instinct originate in primitive life? It is 
always an interesting inquiry to search after the origin of a 
response of the present individual in the past experience of 
the race. In the case of the instinct which we have been 
discussing in this lesson the genesis is as obvious as is that 
of the migratory response, or as that of the activity response, 
which we have already discussed. Possession meant, in 
primitive life, protection against famine as well as security 
from other tribes or from animals. It meant comfort and 
the means of safety. It was doubtless one of the first laws 
of survival that sufficient food must be stored up by an 
individual to last his family through chance seasons of 
famine and unwonted rigor. In a similar way the individual 
who was possessed of the truest arrow or of the longest 
spear — and the greatest number of both — was, other 
things being equal, the superior of any enemy who chanced 
across his pathway. So, too, collecting of legal tender used 
in primitive exchange was an important safeguard against 
suffering and privation. Fuel, skins for clothing, barks, 
woods, juices and pitches and gums, were indispensable in 
the life of early man. So in modern children, who are after 
all closest to the heart of the race, the same force impels 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 57 

them to search out all manner of interesting objects to pos- 
sess them and to enjoy them. The necessity no longer exists 
in the same simple way in which it existed in primitive 
living, but it rather persists as nature's gentle way of open- 
ing the eyes and the ears and the other sensitivities of na- 
ture's child to the great, mysterious surrounding world in 
which it finds itself. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Recall your own early responses to the collecting instinct. Did the 
chief joy lie in the process of collecting, or in the satisfaction of pos- 
sessing? What is your adult attitude toward these early collectings? 

2. Make a list of all the objects which you have ever known children to 
collect. 

3. Do one's early childish interests, as evident in the things collected, 
exert any influence over later vocations or avocations? Can you 
illustrate? 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Can there be any educational significance in a collection of stamps, 
coins, flowers, stones, woods, etc., or in the making of scrapbooks of 
pictures of interesting places, people, events, etc., in connection with 
any of the subjects of study? If so, how may the wise direction of the 
teacher be of value in encouraging and stimulating the young col- 
lectors? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Burk, P. R. "The Collecting Instinct"; in Pedagogical Seminary, 
vol. 7 (1900), pp. 179-207. 

2. Norsworthy, N., and Whitley, M. T. Psychology of Childhood, 
pp. 52-54. 

3. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original 
Nature of Man, pp. 53-54; also p. 102. 



LESSON 10 
INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN {continued) 
5. The Gregarious Instinct: The Gang 
What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Whether there appear to be one or two or perhaps three boys 
in the grade who are "leaders " of the rest. If possible observe 
the organization of the children during the play period and 
note whether the leaders at play are identical with those who 
are leaders within doors. 

2. Any evidence that the teacher endeavors to take advantage 
of these natural groupings in the management of the school, 
in the conducting of the lessons, etc. 

3. Whether there is any more evidence of the gang instinct 
among the boys than among the girls. 

Man's social predisposition. It seems to be human na- 
ture to shun solitude and to seek company. You are familiar 
with the gregarious tendency as experienced in your own 
dislike to be frequently alone, and your wish to have nu- 
merous friends whom you feel that you imderstand and who 
understand and sympathize with your own ambitions and 
ideals and aspirations. Many a time, doubtless, you have 
sought release from a lonely hour at home by standing at the 
window and at least seeing other people, or by actually 
fleeing from the empty house to the home of a friend or 
neighbor, there to remain until the absent father, or mother, 
or children come home again. And then how different the 
empty house seemed in the cheery glow of lamps and fire- 
place and the satisfying hum of voices. You have experienced 
the same loneliness perhaps in riding in an empty coach, or 
studying in a deserted library, or perhaps even in going from 
the city into the country. There is a joy in companionship 
or in crowds which one rarely experiences by himself. It is 
not always necessary to know the people about one, as for 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 59 

instance on a crowded street or in a department store or at 
the church or theater. There is joy in numbers, and the 
very knowledge that other hearts are beating about one is 
in itself a source of contentment. 

This strange aspect of human behavior is called gregari- 
ousness, or the tendency to seek the group. In adult life 
you observe evidences of it in the clubs and societies and 
other social groups which are often organized quite as much 
to satisfy the cravings for congenial companionship as to 
promote educational, civic, or other common ends. Neigh- 
borhood clubs, men's clubs, ladies' circles, secret societies, — 
all fall within the classification. In the foreign quarters of 
large cities you will find "little Italys" and "ghettos" 
where nationalism governs the grouping of adults, thus 
manifesting the cooperation of blood with gregariousness in 
bringing human beings into a common habitation. 

Animal gregariousness. In animals, too, there are very 
striking illustrations of the strength of the gregarious in- 
stinct. Birds, for example, are usually seen together, and 
when they migrate from place to place they are often to be 
observed flying in great numbers in the direction of the 
locality sought. Domesticated animals, notably cattle and 
sheep, behave in a similar manner. Let the herd of cows be 
separated and at once there is evidenced the keenest dis- 
tress, which may continue for several days before the record 
of past associations seems to be obliterated. The herd 
grazes together, comes up to the milking shed together at 
night, and seeks the common shade of the same grove for 
relief from the hot sun at midday. The behavior of sheep 
is similar, as is also that of fowl. Dogs and cats are actuated 
doubtless by the same tendency to run together, although 
the attachment which they come to have for a single home, 
where only one of their kind is permitted, has operated in the 
past to neutralize to some degree the early response. Can 
you furnish other illustrations of the gregarious behavior of 
animals? 

The constitution of boys' gangs. It is perhaps in children, 



PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



1 



and more especially in boys, that the persistence of the 
tendency is most obvious. The statement has been made 
on good authority that three out of every four boys belong 
to a gang at some time or other in their lives. Whether 
this percentage is constant or not, it is a matter of common 
observation that boys almost invariably move in groups. 
Unfortunately the nomenclature of the past has applied 
the term gang to any more or less nondescript group of 
juvenile or adult marauders whose activities were such as to 
cause society to frown upon them. In this discussion, how- 
ever, it is essential that the term be understood in its proper 
psychological sense, that is, a group banded together for a 
common purpose, good or bad. As well call the migratory, 
or the hunting, or the collecting responses bad in themselves 
as to call the gang tendency bad. The gang instinct, like 
all instinctive forces, is in itself a beneficial and highly de- 
sirable tendency. It results in unfortunate consequences 
only when it misuses the normal impulses and turns them 
into undesirable channels of expression. - i 

The constitution of the gang is always an interesting sub- 
ject to contemplate. In general, as Puffer has shown, the 
gang age is from ten to sixteen years, with thirteen and 
fourteen the high-water mark. It is usually strictly a local 
affair, including in its personnel only boys living in the same 
street, or in the same square, or upon intersecting or neigh- 
boring streets. The youthful members are not particularly 
exercised as to the community of nationality represented, 
the Jew being as welcome to their fold as the Gentile, and 
the Irishman as the Finn. Very suggestive names are 
given to the organizations, and there is always a leader, 
chosen usually not because of any temperamental fitness 
for the high authority which he is to wield, but rather be- 
cause he can run the fastest, tell the best story, or otherwise 
excel the attainments of his fellows. Without exception 
the leader is at once judge and court of final appeal in all 
matters of disputation arising within his organization, and 
as a rule the htigants religiously abide by his decisions and 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 61 

findings. Sheldon finds the activities of the gang, from his 
study of 851 gangsters, to include athletics (60 per cent), 
migrations, i.e., building, hunting, fighting, preying|(17 per 
cent), and social, secret or literary activities (only 13| per 
cent) . In his detailed survey of 66 gangs, Puffer found basket- 
ball and football occupying highest place in the list of gang 
activities; tribal industries, such as hunting, fishing, boating, 
building huts, playing Indian, etc., on the one hand, and 
stealing and injuring property on the other, enjoying second 
place ; with such activities as fighting, swimming, migrations, 
running games, smoking, playing cards, skating or sliding, 
and drinking making up the full list. 

It is apparent from Puffer's observations that the gang 
instinct is fraught with great possibilities for good or for 
bad, depending in large measure upon the leader. You have 
doubtless observed a goodly number of illustrations of the 
operation of the gang instinct in boys. You have seen them 
in groups on a Sunday afternoon walking out into the 
country; you have seen them congregated in more or less 
constant groups on the playgrounds; you have seen them 
walking to and from school in unvarying formation. On 
the streets of a city on Sundays many knots of them are to 
be found conversing in somewhat boisterous tone and idly 
observing the passers-by. It is probable that in your own 
neighborhood there exist several gangs of boon companions 
who are always seen together, and who stand together 
through thick and thin in most matters of common partici- 
pation. Members of the same gang are extremely faithful 
to one another, but are not so ready by any means to defend 
one who is outside of their own organization, and it is 
extremely likely that, if you are at all observant and heedful 
of the escapades of your own smaller brother, you have had 
this fact forcibly brought home to you on sundry occasions. 

The tendency in girls. But what shall be said of girls of 
the same age? Are they quite insensitive to the gang 
impulse? By no means, although from the very nature oi 
their more restricted life there is less evidence of the presence 



62 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



■ 



in them of any very strong tendency toward gregariousness. 
There is no doubt, however, that girls go in groups or "sets" 
just as commonly, if not as boisterously, as do boys. Inas- 
much, however, as boys are more ubiquitous, more in- 
evitably seen, and less home-staying, we are apt to make the 
error of assuming that the more quiet and retiring girl is 
quite a different sort of creature. 

Chumming. In either case, both boys and girls, in addi- 
tion to their groups or "sets," usually have special chums 
who are most congenial and best loved. It is doubtful if 
there was ever a real boy who grew up without possessing a 
chum in another boy of the same age and of more or less 
similar tastes. The same thing is true of the girl. The 
"set" is indispensable and its associations are eminently 
satisfying, but there is a special sweetness in having one 
single friend of friends who understands one best, and whose 
ears and heart — and arms — are always open. Recollec- 
tions of such comforting and trusting associations enrich 
and ennoble the whole subsequent life of both individuals, 
and the chums of childhood are likely to remain the fastest 
friends of youth and maturity. 

Gregariousness in primitive society. Beset as they were 
on every hand with dangers that they miderstood but 
vaguely, it was necessary for primitive men to band them- 
selves together into tribes or clans or villages for purposes 
of protection. In union only was there strength. In most 
primitive society the tribe represented the unit of defense 
and offense, every tribe being a law unto itself. The tribe 
or clan lived together, fought together, and often fell to- 
gether before the assault of a superior foe, for natural selec- 
tion ruled early in human history that that tribe should sur- 
vive which kept itself most intact and numerically strongest. 
In subsequent evolutions of communal living other interests 
than the totem-pole or the worship of a common ancestor 
operated to maintain the union of men in groups and to dis- 
courage living in solitude. This early social necessity is 
reflected in your modern gregarious instinct or gang response 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 63 

which, while no longer a prerequisite to survival, still serves 
to draw children together in groups or sets. Often there are 
elaborate ceremonies of initiation into the group, as for 
instance in the secret societies of the high school, and there 
is a remarkably faithful esprit de corps observable in the 
membership of all such organizations. In the case of chil- 
dren of thirteen or fourteen years, however, when the gre- 
garious response in its most primitive form is at its height, 
httle time is wasted on initiations: the activities awaiting 
the attentive participation of all are too alluring. 

We have said that the ganging age begins with about the 
tenth year. Previous to that time the child is more of an 
individual in his tastes and preferences. He is quite content 
to play by himself when no ready comradeship offers, and 
may pass hours at a time in happy, inquisitive solitude. 
He is still in that stage of evolution wherein his primitive 
prototype had not yet learned the necessity for or wisdom 
of community of effort and the pooling of strength in the 
common struggle for survival. In most primitive life, 
doubtless, many an individual defender of his own family 
and hearthstone perished before it was learned that indi- 
viduals must cooperate in matters of the common weal. 
The early, or individualistic, age of childhood represents 
therefore a distinctly lower condition of evolution than does 
the later gregarious age which dawns with incipient puberty 
and continues in some form or other throughout life. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Did you belong to a gang or "set" in childhood? What were the 
activities that you most enjoyed? What is your present attitude 
toward the individuals belonging formerly to the group? 

2. What have you observed of boys' gangs and their activities in your 
own neighborhood? Of girls' sets? 

3. Had you a chum whom you particularly loved? Are you still firm 
friends? 

4. Observe and report upon the activities of some group of boys on a 
Saturday or other holiday. 

5. Observe the preferences of a child of five or six as to play in solitude 
or with other children. 



64 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. If school children in the upper grades are naturally in the dawn of 
the social age, in what ways and to what extent should the life and 
activities of the school be organized on the basis of a miniature 
society? In how far are our schools already meeting this condition? 

2. Is there any argument to be derived from the nature of the gang 
instinct in children against individual instruction and in favor of 
group instruction? 

3. Does the presence of the gang instinct offer any obstacle to the 
teacher, or is it rather to be considered a valuable ally? 

4. What difference in teaching methods would you expect to find between 
the instruction of the kindergarten and that of an eighth grade 
class? Explain. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Lee, Joseph. Play in Education, chaps. 39, 40, and 41. 

2. Puffer, J. A. The Boy and His Gang; especially chaps. 1, 2, 3, and 13. 

3. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original Nature 
of Man, pp. 85-88. 






LESSON 11 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN (continued) 

6. The Play Response 

What to look for in the observation period : 

1. Whether the teacher recognizes the presence of the all-per- 
vading play instinct and occasionally includes it to advan- 
tage in the motives to which she appeals. Are there any 
differences in degree to which the play motive may be ap- 
pealed between the lower and the upper grades? 

Play in animals. If you have ever watched the antics 
of a small, perfectly healthy kitten, you are aware of the 
strength and persistence of the play response. Hardly are 
its eyes open and its legs strong enough to support it when 
it begins to be on the watch continually for a protruding bit 
of string, or a ball of yarn or a spool upon the floor. For 
long periods at a time it will arch its back, creep stealthily 
toward the spool or ball and then spring lightly upon it as 
though it were a mouse about to scamper away. Then, after 
a scuffle during which it shoves it about with its curled paw 
and then springs gleefully after it, it walks demurely off, only 
to pause, look backward at the inoffensive object, and then 
sidestep noiselessly up to it again to repeat the same pro- 
cedure. The dog, too, is no less a victim of the play impulse. 
He seizes the stick in his mouth and darts off with it, growling 
playfully the while, until he succeeds in getting his master's 
attention and in teasing him to throw the stick far from him 
and then run and hide while he goes to fetch it. The dog, 
unlike the cat, is a social being, and takes great delight in 
romping about with other dogs which are actuated by the 
same impulse to play. You have probably smiled many a 
time at the playful wrestling of two dogs in the yard, and 
have perhaps wondered whether they were not actually in 




66 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

earnest about it, so loud and angry did their growling sound 
to you, and so long and sharp appeared their teeth as if 
buried in each other's necks. But they were not fighting; 
they were merely satisfying that tendency universal among 
animate organisms of the higher order to flay. This same 
impelling force is to be seen in the young colt which gambols 
and frolics about the pasture or lot, as well as in the mother 
which, freed unexpectedly from her stall, races madly across 
lots until she is breathless from the exercise. In the frolic of 
lambs and sheep, in the darting hither and yon of chicks after 
the fleeting insect or the disappearing worm, in the aimless 
flying about of birds in the tree-tops and above the meadows, 
and in the habits of many of the wild animals at the zoo, the 
promptings of this same impulse to play are to be observed. 
It is an inner force universal among animals, appearing more 
marked in the case of those which have been tamed or domes- 
ticated and so require a considerable amount of activity 
over and above that needed in securing food to keep them- 
selves in trim. The wilder animals of the forest and jungle 
have need to expend the greater part of their energies in 
obtaining food. 

Play in adult human beings. The healthy, normal adult 
human being plays, also. The mere attainment of maturity 
is no evidence that the play impulse has been forever satis- 
fied; it impUes rather that the more thoughtful games or the 
sports requiring the keener judgment and skill can now be 
more thoroughly and completely enjoyed. Take, by way of 
example, our great national game of baseball. Rare indeed 
is the man who cannot make the necessary arrangements of 
his business to permit of his leavirrg it for two or three hours 
occasionally in order to be a spectator of a "game." Very 
often, too, groups of adult laborers organize teams among 
themselves which compete for the local championship, 
thereby giving themselves not alone the satisfaction of 
watching a game but also affording to many of their mem- 
bers opportunities actually to participate in it. This direct 
participation in some contest of speed, or strength, or 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 67 

cleverness is frequently more enjoyed by adults even than 
the mere passive observation of others competing. Tennis 
and golf offer perhaps the two commonest sources of this 
participation, outside of baseball, and tennis courts and 
golf links are coming to be modern necessities in any com- 
munity. But there are many adults whose physical ex- 
penditures in their vocations are so great, or whose distaste 
lor violent exertion is so pronounced, that they seek relaxa- 
tion in the more quiet and subdued games, such as checkers 
or chess or whist. It is probable that card-parties owe their 
popularity quite as much to the play element in them as to 
the opportunities for conviviality which are offered. But it 
is not essential that there be actual games played in order 
for adults to play. The conversations and discussions with 
boon companions; the relaxation of the after-dinner hour; 
the evening at the theater or the club; the visits at the homes 
of friends; the vacation trip — all these activities are at 
heart play. The recent phenomenal increase of automobil- 
ists points also to the compulsion of the play instinct quite 
as much as to that of the migratory response. So, too, the 
marked tendency to decrease the length of the working day 
in most of the trades is due probably more to the cravings 
within the heart of the laborer for more leisure for enjoyment 
than to any other factor. The modern regimen of a well- 
ordered day calls for eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep, 
and eight hours of play — which is very likely an almost ideal 
division of the twenty-four, provided, of course, the nature 
of the play be such as to increase the eagerness for and joy 
in work rather than to confirm the laborer in his idleness. 

Play in young children. But it is in the children that the 
great play instinct seeks and finds its grandest fruition. 
Childhood is the golden age of play. It is the period when 
play and sleep divide the twenty-four hours tolerably 
evenly among themselves, leaving work a constantly in- 
creasing amount, it is true, but after all omly slight at its 
maximum. In the case of the younger child — i.e., the 
infant from the time of its birth to perhaps the sixth or 



68 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

seventh year — as we have seen, individualism is more 
pronounced than socialism; that is, the inner satisfaction de- 
rived from intercourse with one's self is hkely to be nearly 
as strong as the dehght which comes from intercourse with 
the group. By this it is not meant that all children 'prejer 
to play alone during the early period, but that they find con- 
tentment in solitude quite as readily as when surrounded 
with other playfellows. Let us take a bird's-eye view of 
some of the well loved and universal types of play dear to 
the heart of the young child as the sunlight. 

First, of course, will be the mud-pies! Can you recall the 
multitude of dishes and cans and platters which littered the 
back yard when you were in this dehcious age, and which 
had a way of being found even on the steps into the kitchen 
or perhaps even in the kitchen itself.'* And can you not see 
still the muddy hands and shoes and dresses, and the serious 
faces of your comrades as they made and baked their pies 
with yours .f* And then there were the dolls' tea-parties, and 
the hours and hours of solicitude for the welfare of the dolls 
which must be rocked and lisped and sung to sleep just as 
invariably as the sleepy time approached, only to be rudely 
awakened in the morning by eager hands and made ready 
for the innumerable activities of the new day. Playing 
house with other children was likewise probably one of your 
earliest forms of infantile joy; while memory of the many, 
many hours passed in skipping rope; or in spinning tops; or 
in marshaling tin soldiers in battle array; or in nursing a 
sick doll back to health (probably soon after you recovered 
from your attack of measles or mumps or scarlet fever) who, 
strange to say, was suddenly stricken low with the same 
malady which attacked you; or in racing up and down the 
yard and sidewalk dragging a swaying, squeaking cart be- 
hind you; or trundhng a wheelbarrow back and forth across 
the lawn; or in dressing up in mother's or father's clothes 
and appearing upon the street of men for all the world like 
real grown-ups; or in listening for hours in awesome atten- 
tion to wonderful stories of fairies and goblins or giants; or 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 69 

in turning over the fascinating pictures in your nursery 
rhyme-book; or in driving fast express trains in and out 
between the legs of the table until the inevitable wreck took 
place on a particularly dangerous curve; or in building up 
towers and temples from your blocks until they resembled 
for an instant Pisa's Leaning Miracle, and then were as 
instantly plunged into destruction ; — memories of all these 
interesting childish activities probably surge back into your 
mind faster than they are here enumerated, together with 
scores of other favorite sports and games and activities of 
early childhood. What a pity it is for you teachers who are 
always to work and play among children that memories of 
your own dehcious childish play are apt to become so con- 
fused and indistinct with the onset of maturity. 

Rhythm and ring games are especially liked by younger 
children, and the kindergarten makes perhaps its strongest 
appeal by reason of the emphasis which it places upon them. 
Counting-out games, because of the rhythmical swing, are 
common sources of delight. And the sand-pile! ^Vhatlong, 
earnest hours are spent by the younger child in the construc- 
tion of wondrous caverns and high mountains in the gentle 
medium of a sand-pile! Tunnels and highways and lofty 
peaks arise from its depths indiscriminately at the magic 
command of the youthful engineer who bends all natural 
obstacles to his will. 

Imaginary plajrmates. Sometimes it happens that a child 
who has no brothers or sisters near his own age tires of 
playing always alone. In such event he merely turns his 
creative genius away from the sand-pile or the mud-pie or the 
Mother-Goose, and proceeds to create a playmate, if you 
please! Possibly you yourself were one of those socially- 
minded children who were discontent with solitary play, 
and conjured up within you an imaginary playmate. If so, 
you can better understand the need which children often 
feel for congenial companionship. Once the imaginary 
playmate is created, she becomes the constant companion 
of her creator, playing with her, romping with her, working 



70 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORJVIAL SCHOOLS 

with her, sleeping with her, — yes, even being sympathet- 
ically sick with her Uke a true friend. Listen some day 
when you chance upon such a child and you will hear ner 
talking with her" imaginary" just as happily as though the 
latter were actually there in the flesh. Perhaps she will 
scold her, or it may be that she will belittle her efforts at 
mud-pie making, or at doll-dressing, or at housekeeping, 
or tea-party entertaining. But for the most part the two 
will agree perfectly, and will be found oftenest crooning in 
contentment over some commonly agreeable task. 

The earnestness of play. One other thing should be said 
about the play of very young children before we turn to 
study the older child at his play. Children take their play 
very earnestly to heart, and vouchsafe to it their whole atten- 
tion and their whole energy. Watch a child, for example, 
who is piling up block upon block in anticipation of a grand 
climax when no more blocks can be added. You will find 
that his face is as serious as it is possible for it to be, and as 
he carefully, hesitatingly adds block to block his whole 
personality is centralized and focalized upon the process. 
He is experimenting, testing, trying out with all his mind 
and with all his strength. But that fact does not make him 
the less demonstrative when the climax occurs and the blocks 
fall with a crash. His shouts of glee leave no doubts in your 
mind that if he can be very serious in his play he can in like 
manner be very boisterous. What a successful teacher one 
would be who could succeed in arousing in her children the 
sustained attention and the passionate earnestness which 
their blocks call forth! 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Report upon five minutes spent in observing the play of some do- 
mestic animal, preferably the cat or dog. 

2. Recall some of the things which you liked best to play in early child- 
hood. Why do you think such games appealed to you? 

3. Observe a single child or a group of children at play. Write out your 
impressions and conclusions. 

4. Had you an imaginary companion? If so, recall some of your experi- 
ences in playing "imaginary." 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 71 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. To what extent have our educational values shifted in recent years, 
permitting the play motive to be made use of legitimately in the 
schoolroom? (The Greek word schole from which oiu: word school is 
derived, meant play, or leisure!) 

2. It has been objected to the introduction of the play and other in- 
stinctive motives which naturally hold the child's attention that they 
tend to "sugar-coat" education. How is this possible? Can you 
justify or deny this contention? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Groos, K. The Play of Animals, chap. 3. 

2. Hall, G. S. Aspects of Child Life and Education, "The Story of a 
Sand-Pile," pp. 142-56. 

3. Lee, Joseph. Play in Education; especially chaps. 1 and 30. 

4. Tanner, A. E. The Child, pp. 126-27; also chap. 19, 



^ 



LESSON n 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN {continued) 
7. The Play Response {continued) 
What to look jor in the observation 'period : 

1. Whether there is any socializing influence observable in the 
games played by the children during the play period (recess). 

2. In what respects, if any, the games played by the girls differ 
from those played by the boys. 

3. Evidences of the boisterous element in play. Of the pur- 
posive element. 

The play response of later childhood. In our last lesson 
we took occasion to remark upon the strength of the play 
instinct in earlier childhood, and to discuss some of the more 
common ways in which this response expresses itself at that 
age. In our present lesson we are to continue our inquiry 
into the nature of the play impulse as it appears in the lives 
and activities of older children; i.e., in children of school 
age. After all, you will be dealing in your teaching more 
with children older than six years than you will with chil- 
dren under that age. The nature of the play response of 
later childhood should therefore be of even greater importance 
to you in your actual intercourse witn children of school age 
than that of infancy. Let us then turn our attention to a 
discussion of play as it moulds and holds the lives of the 
former. 

General characteristics. In general it may be said that 
the age of childhood is the age of social play, the age of 
boisterous play, and the age of purposive play. The earher 
period of infancy, as we saw, was rather the age of individual, 
quiet, and aimless playing. When we discussed the gre- 
garious instinct in children we said that the great age of 
gangs and sets begins with about the tenth year, and con- 
tinues in increasing proportions throughout the earlier 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 73 

years of adolescence. In other words, the age of socialism 
in children is synonymous with the ganging age. Just as 
soon as the child begins to hover about the group he loses 
his individuahstic tendencies, and becomes for a time an 
individual who has submerged himself in the group. His 
play immediately ceases to be the simple, unrelated play of 
his own dooryard and becomes the related play of the group 
in which he chances to move. From the very exigencies of 
the new situation and the new emphasis it follows that the 
element of boisterousness and braggadocio enters in in an 
unrestrained enthusiasm and happiness. From the quiet, 
retiring child who bashfully gazed out upon the street and 
watched the team play of older children from afar off, the 
seven-year-old suddenly becomes a running, jumping, 
wrestling, laughing, shouting athlete who throws his whole 
energy into his play and tires himself out perhaps long 
before the day is half over, yet who is never ready to quit of 
his own accord. At the same time, developing slowly from 
the aimless, haphazard running and shouting and pushing 
and wrestling there is evolving within the boy of this age an 
entirely new human being, whose values are coming more 
and more to be the values of the group as represented in 
team work, faithfulness to the organization, fair play, good 
sportsmanship, sympathy, and appreciation, all of which 
desirable qualities were quite lacking in the child of five. 
Nature is evolving a good citizen, a desirable member of the 
group, a social being in every game of baseball and in every 
game of tag, and in every contest of strength or cleverness 
in which her child participates, provided always of course 
that the non-social instincts and the unworthy motives are 
wisely discouraged by the good sense of the group as a whole. 
Let us turn now to consider some of the characteristics of 
the more common games and sports indulged in by children 
in this social age. 

Play is social. It is probable that the simple game of tag 
which children seem never to tire of, and to which they 
inevitably come back when newer games are temporarily 



74 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

discarded, is about as social and socializing in its nature as 
any game which children play. Perhaps its very socialism 
is the reason for children in the midst of the social age 
always indulging more in it than in other sorts. There is 
no limit to the possible number playing it — the more the 
merrier. Skill in it is conditioned not upon clever judg- 
ment nor skillful muscles nor artistic temperament; all that 
is required is a pair of good muscular legs, and given that, 
any child is eligible. Recall for example the many hours of 
the day passed in childhood in this delightfully satisfying 
old game of chase. It mattered not whether there were two 
children or forty; it mattered little whether there was any 
"goal"; all that mattered was that every one should be of 
single mind in the matter. And then what long, happy 
periods of running and shouting and screaming to the lively 
tune of scampering feet across the playground or the high- 
road or wheresoever else you chanced to be. If variety 
were needed, there was always the less strenuous " prisoner's 
base " which required just about the same agility without the 
extended powers of endurance. 

If you will take the pains to watch the activities of a group 
of boys at playtime, or after school on school days, more 
than likely and sooner or later they will all join in playing 
baseball or, in the more usual form, "scrub." Here is 
another socializing game, for in rapid succession every player 
passes through all the possible offices, including catcher, 
pitcher, and umpire. It matters little whether there is very 
much skill manifested or not; a good player elicits praise and 
a poor player happy toleration, so that all are content. Of 
course they are keenly interested too in organized baseball, 
and what school is there nowadays worthy the name which 
has not its "team" to represent it against other schools.'' 
And what a deal of team play is in evidence not among the 
actual players merely but among the entire enrollment of 
the school when its "nine" meets other "nines"! Everybody 
pulls together; there are no slackers and no traitors to the 
cause. This in itself is a token of the socializing spirit of 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 75 

the games of later childhood. They all tend to promote in 
their participants faithfulness to the group, fair play toward 
others, and good comradeship in all. 

Play is boisterous. If you chance to live in a neighbor- 
hood where there are a goodly number of boys seven or 
eight to twelve and thirteen years of age you probably need 
no defense of this caption. Probably half the joy which 
children get out of play lies in the satisfaction which their 
vocal cords experience in free and untrammeled eruption. 
In fact participation in a game is not a prerequisite to this 
release of vocal energy, and you have doubtless seen and 
listened to scores of boys who found shouting and trilling 
and wailing and screaming and screeching ends in themselves. 
In this respect boys are not unlike the scores of dogs which 
you have seen and heard likewise indulging in passionate 
fits of barking when there is nothing in the world to set them 
off save their internal over-pressur€ which seeks its release 
in this noisy way. Nor is it a prerequisite to this intense 
vocalization that boys must be in groups. In pairs or alone, 
it does not appear to make much difference; vocal exercise 
cannot be held in leash, and a single boy dispatched by his 
mother across lots on an errand is certain to indulge on his 
way in a heterogeneous multitude of vocal gymnastics, 
echoes of which may extend backward to his home or for- 
ward to his destination. In a similar way and from a 
similar cause the woodlands are likely to ring on a holiday 
afternoon with the shouts of the juvenile bands who rove 
their depths in quest of chestnuts or acorns or small game. 
Sliding down a hill on a double-runner in a frosty winter 
evening, or whirling across the moonlit ice, or coasting on 
roller-skates down a steep incline, or playing tag in the field, 
or even trooping down the quiet street to school — all these 
activities are accompanied invariably by the hoarse shout 
or the piercing shriek or the boisterous laughter. There is 
nothing of your tempered voice and your gentle speech in 
the assemblies of boys. The words of the old poem, " Boys 
will be boys with their racket and noise," are eternally true. 



76 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

and doubtless even in those strict days of the Puritans, boys 
found opportunity in some unfrequented spot to indulge 
their vocal organs to the utmost. As well try to hold back 
the plunging waterfall as to repress the invincible "racket 
and noise" of healthy young children. 

An interesting commentary upon this delight in uproari- 
ous boisterousness is to be seen in the celebrations of the 
Fourth of July. In recent years, to the undying gratifica- 
tion of outraged mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts, 
the larger and noisier cannon-crackers are not purchasable 
as they were a dozen or more years ago, and consequently 
the celebrations of the national holiday tend to become more 
and more decorous and quiet. But the will to make noise 
is still there in the heart of every boy, and on this holiday of 
holidays it leaps up into response in long blasts on tin horns 
or whistles and the beating of drums and the discharging of 
such explosives as are available, so that while the quality of 
the "racket and noise" is somewhat impaired, its quantity 
does not deteriorate. 

Play is purposive. And yet with all its noise and boister- . 
ousness play is developmental, and across the warp of \ 
shouting and immoderate laughter and shrieking and trill- 
ing there runs a woof-thread of seriousness, although it is 
frequently so thin as to be all but invisible to parents and 
older brothers and sisters. Nature is very much in earnest 
about her children, as Joseph Lee has remarked, and none 
of their play is really aimless. There is little question that 
the boy will be a better man because he was an exceedingly 
active and ubiquitous and vocally minded youth. To the 
clever discerner of childhood the purposive aspects of even 
the most boisterous play do not pass unobserved. Think, 
for example, of the training which boys unwittingly get in 
using the universal jackknife in whittling. You have prob- 
ably suspected sometimes in observing some enterprising 
boy bent over his pine shingle that there is a distinct 
whittling age through which boys appear to pass, and in a 
general way your observation was correct. Most boys have 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 77 

a craving for tools wherewith to build great varieties of toys 
of which they have need, and the wise parent will see to it 
that this craving is reasonably gratified. The purposiveness 
in play is apparent, too, in such activities as collecting, ex- 
ploring, bow and arrow playing, stone throwing, kite flying, 
velocipede riding, etc. Each one of these activities has a 
definite contribution to make in the evolution of the com- 
plete adult, and nearly every boy passes through distinct 
periods in which one or more of these activities predominate. 
Then, too, consider the voice trilling so universally observa- 
ble among seven-year-olds. They are experimenting upon 
their own vocal abilities, and many a so-called "cat call" 
represents weeks and months of purposive training and per- 
sistent practice on the part of the boy. In addition to these 
phases of purposeful activities, should be mentioned the 
dehght which young people take in puzzles, conundrums, 
sleight of hand, and other kinds of play involving care and 
skill in performing. Possibly the interest in the last men- 
tioned type of mystery, sleight of hand, is as strong as any 
interest which a child has in his ninth to eleventh years, and 
it by no means disappears even with the coming of adoles- 
cence. To be able to make things disappear — pass appar- 
ently out of existence — or to be miraculously metamor- 
phosed before the wondering stare of boon companions, is 
enough to call forth a sort of hero worship for the juggler 
who is able to do it, and you perhaps have known of boys 
who passed many an evening in their playroom endeavoring 
to think the magician's thoughts after him. And fancy, if 
you can, the glass tumblers that were broken and the water 
that was spilled upon the floor in the vain attempt to empty 
a glass of water without appearing to do so! 

And spruce gum! Where is the clever author who will 
write for us a whole volume on the lure of the spruce-trees? 
One of the chief attractions of the forest is undoubtedly the 
oozing gum from the spruce-trees. If you lived in the 
country you can well recall the innumerable trips to the 
woods, the exciting search after promising sources, the 



78 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

blistered hands and cut fingers, and then finally the trium- 
phant return homeward with pockets bulging with the 
precious gum! Other purposive activities are to be seen in 
the mterest m fishing, the chmbing of trees, the tunneHng in 
the snow and the erecting of snow forts at strategic corners 
ot the backyard, the playing soldier, the building of water- 
mW ^^iT ''' *^^.°^^^^«t brook, the diving and swim- 
ming _ all these are just as vital factors in the training of a 

^oLlZ ^l r' f ^'' '^' ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ y^^ teach him 
formally m school, perhaps even more so. The normal adult 
IS just as much a creatm-e of his play environment as he is a 
creatm-e of his study environment; and neither will suffice 
as a satisfactory sort of training without the other. 

W hif ""''"^'"^' ^^' '^"" ^^^ ^^d mischief have 
long been synonymous terms, at least in the mind of the 

the r"'r' *'' f*- . ^^^ ^^-- f- whaTever truth 

t?me in llw T'^^T ^^ "°,* ^'' *^ ^^^k' There comes a 
time m the Big Injun Age when the rapidly evolvin- bov 
ceases to have the faith in the symbolistic life of pMch 
he had earher. He is coming to be a reahst just in propor 
tion as life opens before him and dispels the ideahsm'^wTch 

the bov Tl"^'^ ^T- ™^" '^^' ^^' «^ -^-li«n^ dawns 
the boy rebels inwardly at the silly doll play of his sisTi 

and may even m a fit of wrath kick her doll-house down and 
chide her sharply for believing in such unreal things Ts dolls 
and doll-houses. Santa Claus has ceased to be a myth and 
now he sagely denies the existence of any Santa Claus 
His trains and carts and wheelbarrow even are no lonZ 
een in the same light. The halo which cast its speVabout 
symboto infancy and early childhood is now dispelled 
and naked reahties come to take their place. In sueC 
state of mind, the time of life when the h,jm«n .u 

infant nor youth but stands within a so'to^uXXdo" 
boys often find it not easy to break with the past .n^^ 
brace the present. There come days when the oldl^' 
are no longer satisfying, when the calfof wood or str^if oTol 
field IS hkely to go unheeded. The result is that not W 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 79 
in, what to do nor which way to turn they do /he most 
unusual or unlikely thing - it is the age of m.sch.et. Tricks 
u"n other boys o'r upon older people are —-^^^^^^^^^^ 

"p'-at this time. In many eases the customary react.on 
dols not come in time, and boys enter upon unfortuimte 
careers which ultimately may lead to their becoming really 
had ra^gsters and perhaps eventually inmates of reform 
sctrt Appears to be an age in which the boy IS blm^^^^^^ 

seeking the Ught and strivmg valiantly to fand tiimseir. 
The term p«6/rfj, is applied by psychologists to the age of 
Ufe unX discussion here. What does the word mean? 

GWs- play. The play of girls is always less boisterous 
thfntat'of'boys, partly because t^ey have more, ho jd^ 
ties which keep them from mingling with other girls ot Uiur 
at To constantly, partly because they are naturally more 
Sr ng and parily because they are naturally more serious 
mnded But this does not mean that girls do not pay 
boisterously enough on occasion; it rather means that the 
hm ation of thel sex places a mild restraint upon their 
soorts The girl is concerned with learning to use the finer 
mu c e movements in embroidering and sewing and bas- 
ketry she is intensely interested in reading usually much 
more so than boys; she loves such games as London bridge, 
ri^Pounda-rosie, farmer in the dell, and others which 
can be played on the la*n or in the sitting-room, ^he is 
ako concerned with exchanges of confidences with her 
chum or the other girls in her set, and passes hours strolling 
arm\ arm with her friends jesting and conversing hgitly 
Xut such engrossing matters as books and games »d^a^^ 
castles and future careers and music lessons ^"d => ^^^^^^^ 
and one other items of equal importance. It is the age ot 
fdeals and ambitions for the life which beckons rosily be- 



fore them. 



80 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. What evidence can you cite from your own observation of the play 
of older children that it is social in its nature rather than individual? 

2. Discuss the boisterous element in the play of boys and the play of 
girls. ^ •' 

3. What different forms have you known "mischief" in older bovs to 
take? *^ 

4. There are several theories which have been advanced to explain the 
origm of play. Look up and report upon each of the more important 
of them, viz^: the SchiUer-Spencer Theory, the Recapitulatory Theory, 
the Groos Theory, and the Relaxation Theory, citing the evidence 
for and against in each case. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Suppose, in order to make her instruction in any subject more inter- 
esting and effective, a teacher divides her class into two teams; how 
Se individuals?*^ ^^ ''^^^''^ ""^ ^^^^ ^''''* ^ socializing influence over 

2. How are such organizations as school improvement leagues, school 
congresses bu-d protection clubs, school orchestras, baseball leagues, 
etc.. socializing agencies? Do they have also a purposive aspect? 

to c'^ntn-hfrt °^^^ t^,r t'^^^Pt^'-^ of the school playground be made 
to contribute toward the socializing of boys and girls? Would free 

falryTthTsSeS?"^ ^"'"^^^^' '' *'^ ''^^^^' ^« -«- -«- 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Kirkpatrick, E^A. Fundamentals of Child Study, chap. 9 

2. Lee, Joseph. Play in Education, chaps. 19 and 38 

3. Norsworthy. N.. and Whitley. M. T. Psychology of ChUdhood, chap. 

4. Waddle. C. W. Introduction to Child Psychology, chap. 6. 



LESSON 13 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN {continued) 

8. The Fighting Response 

General characteristics of the fighting response. It has 
been contended that a boy never becomes a man until he 
has had a fight. Whether the adage be strictly true, one 
must decide for himself. In any event the very fact that 
most boys do fight more or less automatically upon the 
slightest provocation would seem to make any such general 
statement plausible. In the simple and immediate reac- 
tions of the boy a fight is the logical, necessary, and inevita- 
ble way to settle any dispute or misunderstanding or be- 
littlement which he may have chanced to suffer at the hands 
of his companions. It is nature's earliest way; it is there- 
fore the boy's native way. Boys do not permit themselves 
to any rigid analysis of motives. They have no fine-spun 
theories of arbitration or peaceful settlements of their 
grievances. Such a state of mind is the outgrowth of years 
of experience and thoughtfulness, both in the life of nations 
and in the life of individuals. The most natural sort of un- 
derstanding is that arrived at by force of feet and arms and 
fists and teeth, as is true in the case of all other animals. 

Earliest manifestations in infancy. In general the fight- 
ing response is called forth whenever some other of the in- 
stinctive tendencies has been prohibited from expression or 
thwarted in its satisfaction. In its most primitive form the 
fighting response is to be observed in the activities of very 
young children whose immediate desires are not gratified. 
For example, if there is a delay of a few seconds in the pro- 
vision of food, the infant responds by kicking his feet and 
legs up and down, doubling and clenching his hands, and 
convulsively distorting his facial expression, accompanying 
all these muscular discharges with crying or fretting and 



82 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

whining. Again, if the infant is repressed when it feels 
active, as for example being placed in the cradle or put pre- 
maturely to bed, it responds in much the same way. Or, 
if a desired toy is not forthcoming when wanted, or has been 
taken forcibly from it by worn-out parents, all the symp» 
toms enumerated become at once in evidence and the fight- 
ing responses are made by the angry child. ^^ In a similar way 
if jealousy is aroused in it by preferences shown to a visiting 
child by the unthinking mother, who desires above all things 
to manifest a poUte interest in her neighbor's infant, un- 
mistakable and insistent symptoms of anger and rage are 
observable in the ensuing crying and perhaps actual abuse 
of the infantile visitor. The ownership response, when 
thwarted, undergoes a like transformation, as do other in- 
stinctive activities of infancy. 

In older children. But as the child grows older he comes 
more and more to repress the crying and fretting which ac- 
companied his earher anger states, and relies increasingly 
upon the strength of his muscles to procure the desired 
privileges and advantages. If the mother attempts to re- 
move the toy or to expostulate with him, he seizes it madly 
and may actually strike even her. If she remonstrates he 
will perhaps run away, thus temporarily at least proving 
himself superior to the forces which would repress and con- 
trol his pleasure. When childhood is fully come, however, 
this attitude toward the mother or father has undergone 
a marked change, and the child no longer resents physically 
the will of the home. But if he controls his fighting re- 
sponses while within the four walls of home he makes up for 
It with good measure when he is associated with his fellows 
on the playground. It is true that there are great individual 
differences in children in their response to the fighting in- 
stinct. Many of them either are not particularly pugna- 
cious, or else they never chance to meet situations which 
would lead them to give expression to it. In such children 
about all the evidences there are of the fighting impulse are 
confined to occasional tilts with one another over trifling 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 83 

matters of disagreement which never progress far enough to 
be termed real fights. It should be noted, however, that 
even the shrill tongue and the unkind speech and the cutting 
remark and the disagreeable attitude are just as much forms 
of expression to the instinct as are actual physical encoun- 
ters. 

In general the sorts of stimuli which favor the excrescence 
of the actual physical combat are of four kinds, viz. : first, 
the belittlement or disparagement of one's father or some 
other member of one's immediate family; secondly, the insult 
offered to one's pride in his own abilities or accomplish- 
ments; thirdly, immoderate teasing on the part of others; 
and fourthly, unfairness or cheating of a playmate. As for 
the first of these, the disparagement of one's relatives, little 
need be said in exposition. It has doubtless been a common 
observation on your part that one of the deepest insults 
which can possibly be offered by one boy to another is dis- 
agreeable reference to his parent, regardless of whether oi* 
not the insinuation happens to be true. It is at once the 
signal in any red-blooded boy to spring to the defense of his 
home or his people and avenge the wrong. Indeed, the de- 
fense of the family has always been one of the fundamental 
determinants of action in the whole history of the race; it is 
the same impulse which actuates the boy in his challenging 
of any disagreeable allusion to his own family. 

In the second place, teasing as an incentive to battle, the 
response is not so direct and immediate. Up to a certain 
extent, teasing may even be distinctly pleasurable, but be- 
yond that limit it becomes positively disagreeable and in- 
tolerable to the victim. A boy may bear for weeks and 
months at a time with the teasing of an older boy, and then 
suddenly fall upon his tormentor on some fine day and give 
him a sound thrashing and a much-needed lesson. Instances 
of this sudden explosion of energy long pent up are by no 
means rare, and you have very likely known of more than 
one yourself, either in your own early behavior or in the 
behavior of others. The same thing exists in the animal 



84 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

world, and some small animal long the victim of unjust and 
persistent exploitation on the part of some larger member 
of his own family may turn upon his pursuer and not only 
hold him at bay, but actually punish him in a fierce physical 
encounter. It has often been said that in order to rid one's 
self of the persecutions of a bully the best procedure lies in 
bullying the bully, for often a sizable body harbors but a 
feeble will and slight courage. It is to be regretted, how- 
ever, that often the victim lacks the courage of his convic- 
tions and continues to be the sufferer. In such a case the 
first statement which we made in this lesson applies with 
its true emphasis; a boy never becomes a man until he has 
had a fight. 

The third incentive for the release of the fighting response 
is actual insult to one's pride in his own abilities or accom- 
plishments. Let another boy sneer at a child's attainments 
in the schoolroom or his achievements outside, and the 
setting is made for the latter to challenge the former either 
to recant or to defend himself in physical combat, or, if 
prudence decrees otherwise, the one insulted nourishes within 
his breast the rankling grievance which may or may not at 
some future time be settled. For example, a jest at one's 
manner of speech, or of one's dress, or disparagement of 
one's collection of shells, or of one's composition, or of one's 
recitation, invariably sets the heart beating faster and sum- 
mons up within one the fighting impulse, either to challenge 
the detractor then and there or else to speed ahead and prove 
one's self the better scholar or the more favored of one's 
companions. Thus either physical or mental rivalry may 
result. 

Finally, fourthly, unfairness or cheating in a playmate 
may become the stimulus for an outburst of the fighting 
spirit. It chanced, for example, that a group of boys whom 
the writer was observing were enjoying a very short recess 
by coasting on a long bobsled down a steep hill. Halfway to 
the bottom of the hill there was a sharp turn in the road, 
which made it necessary for the coasters always to station 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 85 

one of their number at that point in order to give them a 
signal of "clear track ahead," or of "danger" if a team 
chanced to be coming. One of the boys, apparently desirous 
of spoihng the slide which his mates were about to have — 
for the lot of policeman had fallen upon him — gave the 
"clear" signal and at once the big sled sped down the hill. 
When it had nearly approached the point where the boy 
stood he suddenly began wildly flinging his arms about and 
warning the steersman to turn aside, which the latter did, 
piling his passengers in a struggling heap in the snow. But 
there was no team coming! Forthwith the boys, and girls 
too, fell upon the hapless policeman and nearly stifled him 
in the deepest snowdrift available. Their fighting natures 
were aroused by the deceit of their fellow. It is ever so in 
our adult intercourse. For the deceiver and trickster we 
have nothing but contempt and scorn. There is not such a 
great difference after all between the values of a group of 
school children and a group of men and women. 

The fighting response in girls. The manifestations of 
this instinct in girls are often limited to the bitter speech 
and the unkind remark, the tongue being considered among 
them doubtless to be their superior weapon. And sharp 
and incisive it is, too, as you very well appreciate if you have 
ever chanced to be a spectator of girlish disputes. It some- 
times happens, though, that even girls fall upon one another 
in wrath at some slight or insult, real or imaginary, and then 
witness the deft slapping of faces and the hair pulling which 
ensue! Upon boys, too, the hands of older sisters and even 
of younger ones are often laid in no gentle way, but it is not 
necessary for boy and girl to be brother and sister in order 
for a quarrel to be precipitated. Boys appear to appreciate 
this fact, and wisely refrain from unwise approach into the 
vicinity of the long arms and quick hands of enraged girls. 
Still, one would have to seek far for data justifying the opin- 
ion that the fighting impulse among girls ever degenerates 
into the sheer brute combativeness which it not infrequently 
assumes in boys' disputations. 



86 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

The origin of the fighting response. Primitive man was, 
as we have seen, continually surrounded with dangers, many 
of which he did not understand and from which therefore 
he was but poorly able to guard himself. His two chief 
sources of danger lay, however, in the larger animals and 
the other tribes of human beings which surrounded him, 
and the only positively dependable way whereby he could 
arm himself against both of these enemies was necessarily 
by evolving or developing the harder muscles. This he no 
doubt did by actual combats which he had with them, quite 
as much as by the hard, continual struggling against the 
rigors of the natural forces which encompassed him. Fight- 
ing was a necessary form of activity frequently employed in 
the earliest history of the race, and to its original fighters the 
race as at present constituted owes its preservation in the 
remote days beyond the dawn of history. The fighting 
instinct in boys and girls is therefore merely the remnant 
of one of the essential aspects of the racial struggle for sur- 
vival. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Observe all the fighting responses manifested during the day by an 
infant. 

2. Report upon instances of any physical combativeness which you 
chance to see in children. If possible, discover the causes. 

S. What has been your observation of the fighting response in girls? 

4. Has the fighting response any constructive value in adult society? 

5. Recall all possible instances of the appearance of the fighting instinct 
in your own childhood. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Norsworthy, N., and Whitley, M. T. Psychology of Childhood, 
pp. 54-57. 

2. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original 
Nature of Man, pp. 68-75. 



LESSON 14 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN {continued) 

9. The Teasing and Bullying Responses; the Display 
and Approval Responses 

What to loohfor in the observation period: 

1. Whether there is any evidence of bullying or teasing on the 
playground during the recess periods. 

2. Illustrations of the unquenchable thirst for approval which 
children ordinarily manifest with reference to their writing, 
drawing, recitations, acts of courtesy toward teacher, etc. 

The teasing response. If you have ever chanced to watch 
a cat which had caught a small mouse, but which was un- 
willing to kill it at once, you have observed something of the 
teasing instinct in animals. The cat under these circum- 
stances crouches upon the ground, watching narrowly the 
dazed but slowly recovering mouse until it has so far re- 
gained its powers of locomotion as to attempt to scurry 
unsteadily away; then with the speed of lightning the cat 
springs up and pounces upon it, thereby dazing it again, only 
to repeat the same procedure in another moment when it 
attempts to run away a second time. This play may con- 
tinue for several moments before the cat finally puts an end 
to the misery of its victim. Such worrying of another crea- 
ture is, translated into human terms, the teasing and, in 
more exaggerated form, the bullying more or less common 
among children everywhere. 

The most interesting and comprehensive study of this 
instinctive response in children is that reported by Burk, 
to which we shall now briefly refer. 

Burk's study. Among the nineteen groups into which 
Burk divides the 1,120 cases of teasing which are included in 
his study are the following: (1) Egoistic assertion of author- 



88 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

ity. One of the cases falling within this classification states 
that " Willie (fourteen years of age) played with boys much 
younger than himself, and when tired of play he would 
throw away their hats, throw the little fellows into the mud, 
cuff their ears, and always send them home crying before 
they had played an hour." (2) Primitive blackmail, as 
illustrated in this : " A boy (nine years of age) goes up to a 
group of smaller boys playing marbles, puts their marbles 
in his pocket and walks off"; or this: "Boy would whip his 
younger brother until the latter swore, and then under 
threat of exposure would make the younger do the chores 
for him." (3) Tormenting, as in the case of " M. (nine years 
old) who, knowing that F. did not like to have her hair 
touched, tied it in hard knots when she was asleep." (4) 
Excitation of fear, as in this incident : " Willie was afraid of 
dogs. H. put Willie on dog's back. Willie screamed and 
cried. H. laughed." (5) Excitations of anger. "L. (eight 
years of age) had the habit of crying at little things. When 
the children at school found this out they would pull her 
hair, knock books out of her hand just to see her cry, and 
then they would call her 'Cry Baby.'" (6) Calling names. 
"The name applied generally is in some way related to per- 
sonal peculiarities, as 'Long Legs,' 'Fire-Head,' 'Cry Baby/ 
etc." (7) Teasing older people with personal peculiarities. 
" Boys would throw stones at an old, eccentric man's house, 
until he came out and angrily told them he was writing down 
their names and would have them arrested." Burk's data 
include a great many other illustrations of the form which 
the teasing response takes in boys and girls. We have cited 
enough of them to give some idea of the extreme diversity of 
the response. 

Obviously the teasing is directed always toward those 
children who will respond most satisfyingly to it: children 
take little delight in teasing those of their companions who 
do not manifest symptoms of displeasure or concern at their 
efforts, and soon learn to pick out from among them all the 
relatively few who are easy prey to their will. In fact 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 89 

children often have an instinctive cleverness at singling out 
easy victims. The child who is timid or underdeveloped, 
or anaemic, or retiring, or peculiar in any way is certain to 
be victimized by the bully. Your own experience and ob- 
servation will doubtless confirm this statement. 

Lack of sympathy. Sympathy is an acquired or learned 
response far more than it is an innate one, and because they 
have not acquired it, children of the grosser nature possess 
no feeling for their prey. As well expect sympathy for the 
mouse in the cat as sympathy for the boy in the teaser. 
This utter failure of the child to put himself in the place of 
his victim is responsible for the extreme lengths to which 
he may go in obtruding his tyrannical will upon those 
weaker or less willing to resist than himself. Witness, for 
instance, the cold-bloodedness with which children plague 
half-witted boys. They are utterly incapable of the finer 
and nobler promptings of sympathy and forbearance which 
they will come to feel in due time as a result of their in- 
creased experience and wise training. 

Bullying. Bullying represents simply the teasing response 
raised to the nth power. If he succeeds well in his teasing 
the very satisfaction which he derives serves to increase his 
boldness, and the boy degenerates into the bully. From 
being merely a thoughtless youngster seeking to amuse him- 
self at the expense of his less strong-minded or strong-bodied 
fellows, he becomes a positive bully who coerces those 
younger and smaller than himself to do his will. This is per- 
haps the only one of all the instinctive responses which is 
absolutely and totally bad. And yet even the bully can 
with proper training and wise direction be transformed into 
a great champion for the rights and privileges of the weak, 
provided only you set to work upon him in full earnest and 
prevail upon him to turn his fine physique or his strong 
mind to the defense and protection of those of his play- 
mates less well equipped than he. The motivation of 
savage life was individualism; that of civilized life should be 
altruism. 



90 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

Display and Approval 

Evidence of display response in animals. It may be that 
you have chanced to see a peacock in the zoo or on the pea- 
cock farm during the rare moments when its beautiful tail 
was spread into a circle resplendent in its myriad of colors 
and shades. If so, you observed that the peacock was not 
content to display his beauty in privacy, but that he ap- 
peared actually to experience real delight in strutting back 
and forth in the sunshine before the appreciative onlookers 
as though for all the world he was proud of his looks! But 
if you have never happened to see a peacock during these 
moments of display, you have surely seen the cock strutting 
proudly about among his feathered subjects in evident fowl- 
consciousness of his thick-set body and long, feathery tail 
and arched neck, which no doubt inspire the less imposing 
hen to look upon her lord and master with no small amount 
of fowl-appreciation. Or again, you have been attracted, 
ever since the childhood days when you chased them 
laughingly over the fields, to the bright colors of the butter- 
flies which flit idly about from flower to flower as though 
displaying their simple beauty to whomsoever chances to 
see and admire. Indeed, the butterfly has come in our 
speech to be synonymous with vain beauty without any aim 
in life other than the display of that beauty. Can you not 
think of other illustrations of vanity in the lower organisms 
which are more or less akin to the display responses and the 
approval responses of human beings? 

Display in primitive life. You learned in your study of 
the Indian that one of the remarkable traits in his behavior 
was the importance which he attached to war-paint and 
feathers and beads and wampum. It is probable that the 
employment of these materials in his decorations had a 
twofold purpose: the one, to inspire terror in the hearts of 
his enemies, and the other to attract and win the approval 
of the female. As an illustration of the first of these values 
which the Indian attached to decoration of the person. 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 91 

recall the descriptions which you have read of the war- 
dance in which every warrior participated. With paint- 
smeared faces and befeathered braids they danced in in- 
creasing fury about the totem-pole until they had w^orked 
themselves up into a mad frenzy, and then they darted away 
into the forest to join battle with the enemy, trusting quite 
as much to the hideousness of their make-up as to the valor 
of their arrows and clubs and tomahawks to strike terror 
to the hearts of their foes. But there was another aspect to 
the same war-dance. Squatting in the lurid background of 
the central area of the settlement where the warriors were 
dancing were the women of the tribe looking with discrim- 
inating eyes upon the art and the dress of the dancers, and 
it may have been that he who was most brilliantly painted 
and most befeathered and most fleet of foot set the hearts of 
all the unmarried maidens beating the faster as they built 
air-castles of the future in which the besmeared warrior 
found a prominent place. The art of decoration in primitive 
life was, in other words, a practice socially necessary either 
to the preservation of the tribe from danger or to the attract- 
ing of a mate. Have you learned something of this same 
putting on of color and hue and adornment by insects and 
lower organisms in order to attract a mate? 

The response in civilized adults. But the desire to dis- 
play and the thirst to win approval did not disappear with 
the passing of the savage stage in human development; they 
merely underwent certain transformations in keeping with 
the spirit of the times, and you will find innumerable illus- 
trations of their persistence in more or less modified form 
in every normal adult whom you meet or about whom you 
read. It is the influence exerted over us, for example, by 
these instinctive forms of behavior which actuate us all to 
seek approval for our acts and opinions and by the same 
token to seek to avoid disapproval for them. There are few 
of us who do not feel the thrill which comes with a word of 
appreciation or approval on the part of the group in which 
we move; and in many persons the thirst is so strong that 



92 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

many are actually led to court such expression, often to 
their own mortification. Every one desires success in his 
business or profession quite as much that he may win the 
social approval of his fellows as that he may maintain his 
family in comfort. The good will of one's neighbors isA 
usually of more intrinsic worth to one than is his money. 
The cherishing of one's good name, the maintaining of one's 
personal honor, the walking circumspectly within the law 
are all aspects of the desire for approval which is implanted 
from most primitive life in every human breast. Even 
one's ambition leads him on to a position of greater influence 
and usefulness not more than to one in which he can deserve 
and receive the approval of society. Occasionally, it is true, 
this thirst for approval leads to undue and immoderate dis- 
play, as in the case of the woman who dresses extravagantly 
or immodestly; but for the most part civiUzed beings of 
mature age turn their efforts away from the more primi- 
tively rooted display and toward the more cultivated and 
social ap-proval. 

Display in children. It is true, however, that in young 
children who are still more primitive and closer to the heart 
of nature the grosser instinct of display occupies a very 
prominent place. From the time when it begins to be in- 
terested in showing off its new toys or in calling the atten- 
tion of a guest to its curls the child is a displayer, par excel- 
lence. Note, for example, the pride which the young child 
takes in a new dress, and how consciously she trips along the 
walk in order to display it, not unhke the peacock or the 
butterfly. And new shoes! You will probably not find it 
difficult to recall the conscious pride which you yourself 
took in a new pair of shoes, and how happily you walked to 
school or to church in them, stopping anon to gaze down 
into your own reflected happy face in the toes. You may 
recall also that you compared them secretly with the older 
and more worn shoes of some playfellow, and inwardly pitied 
her who could not have a new pair like yourself. Observe 
too the pride which children take in displaying some bit 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 93 

of school work, whether or not it is particularly remarkable 
in execution. I have recently seen in the schoolroom a boy 
who eagerly displayed to the other children and to the visitor 
a house which he had drawn on his tablet, though it would 
have taken a genius to determine that those uneven lines 
and dashes on a smeared and crumpled sheet of paper rep- 
resented a house! Yet such is the simple compellingness of 
the instinct to display. 

Not long since there chanced to be visitors present in a 
schoolroom where there was too little opportunity offered 
for the children to show themselves off for what they be- 
lieved they were worth. In consequence of this felt lack a 
seven-year-old girl was seen to take a block of paper from 
her desk, tear out of it a perfectly new, clean sheet, crumple 
it up in her hand and walk calmly out across the front of the 
room and as calmly and slowly throw it in the waste-basket! 
And all the child had to display was a flaming new hair- 
ribbon! If you are at all familiar with the modus vivendi 
of the schoolroom, you have observed times without num- 
ber children who were eager to display some piece of handi- 
work, or some bit of writing, or some ability in spelling, or 
even clean hands and finger-nails at the morning inspection. 
Among themselves, too, children take great pride in their 
report cards, their collections, their dolls, their white rats, 
or even the wound which they received in a scuffle or the 
wrist they burned on the stove or the finger they cut with 
their new, sharp knife. There seems to be no limit to the 
diversity of their interests and the pride which they take in 
display. Witness, for example, the boy who came to school 
recently with no less than a dozen buttons displayed boldly 
on his lapels, including Liberty-Loan buttons, Red-Cross 
buttons, political buttons, Sunday-School buttons, and one 
which read "License to butt in" (!) and which he seemed 
prouder of than all the rest, judging from the boisterous and 
ostentatious manner in which he proceeded to put its motto 
into effect upon the playground. 

And then think of the child's desire for approval on the 



94 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

part of parent, teacher, and chum. With what eagerness 
and earnestness does he seek always to do the teacher's will, 
to anticipate her slightest wishes in the way of erasing a 
blackboard, or carrying her books to and from school, or 
stooping to pick up her pencil from the floor. And how he 
strives to improve the "curve" of his ball, or the trust- 
worthiness of his muscles in order to win the admiration of 
his fellows. Social esteem is as sweet to him as to the adult, 
and social contempt every whit as bitter. So with the girl, 
although she is probably not usually as active in her solici- 
tations of praise as is the more thirsty boy. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Report upon any instances of teasing which j'ou chance upon in chil- 
dren. Observe especially the reasons why the victim is the victim. 

2. Enumerate several things which you have observed that people do 
partly at least to be approved by others. 

3. Observe as many children as possible and note the prominence of the 
approval-display response. Report your results to the class. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. What direct use can the teacher make in the classroom of the natural 
desire for approval which actuates children so that they will be eager 
to do their very best possible work? 

2. Is there any danger that those children who are possessed of but 
mediocre ability may lose interest in their work if the teacher makes 
too open or frequent appeal to the instincts of emulation and ap- 
proval? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

a. On teasing and bullying: 

1. Burk, F. "Teasing and Bullying"; in Pedagogical Seminary, vol. 4, 
pp. 336-71. 

b. On approval and display: 

2. Norsworthy, N., and Whitley, M. T. Psychology of ChUdhood, 
pp. 66-68. 

3. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original Nature 
of Man, pp. 89-91. 



LESSON 15 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN (continued) 

10. The Rivalry Response 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Indications of rivalry lq the upraised hands of the children 
whenever a question is asked by the teacher. (Especially in 
the lower grades, and regardless of whether the children can 
answer the questions asked or not.) Why.f* 

2. Other illustrations indicative of the rivalry among the pupils 
in securing the approval and notice of the teacher. 

3. Whether there are any indications that the teacher is en- 
deavoring to turn the instinct of rivalry to advantage. Are 
there, for example, honor rolls, "health teams," etc.? 

General characteristics. The rivalry response is inter- 
woven closely with the other instinctive forms of behavior 
and is in itself merely a higher form of the fighting response. 
Just as a boy will oppose the thwarting of his desires by 
fighting, so he will strive equally hard on occasion to excel 
his fellows by putting forth his best energies in other than 
pugnacious effort. Thus, he may respond to a thirst for 
approval which he fails utterly to win in either one of two 
ways: he may challenge his detractors to physical combat, 
or he may redouble his efforts and so come ultimately to 
excel them in the very field in which he failed before, thereby 
winning their approval and even admiration of him as a 
playmate. If he follows the latter and wiser line of action, 
he will be actuated by the motive of rivalry. The end of 
rivalry is, therefore, approval; the former instinct is in the 
nature of a handmaiden to the latter. Rivalry becomes, in 
its finer manifestations, a straightforward, social striving 
for the approval of fellow, group, or class. 

The response among adults. Rivalry is at the basis of 
many of our adult forms of response, and perhaps occupies 



96 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

a place in our innate equipment second only to the self- 
preservative instincts. You see all degrees of it at any time 
and in any group. You see alike its finer and its grosser 
aspects. As an illustration of the last, witness for example 
the absurdities and the extravagances of dress and style 
which milady displays in her circuitous game of "keeping 
up with" the other ladies of her acquaintance in the matter 
of her personal appearance. Another instance of the same 
grosser aspect of the rivalry response is to be seen in the mul- 
tiplication of automobiles among those who can but ill 
afford this indulgence of their determination to keep up with 
their neighbors. Can you think of other negative phases of 
the rivalry or emulation response in adults? 

But there is distinctly a positive side to the instinct to 
emulate. It is observable in the business rivalry which 
seethes among men of business to outstrip their competitors 
and rivals by underselling them or, on the negative side, by 
absorbing smaller businesses in their own. The trust is 
after all but the natural and logical culmination of the in- 
nate desire in every human breast to excel or outstrip or 
outdo every one else in our field. The motto "five, and let 
live," when applied to the existence of small, independent 
businesses, is quite likely to be too ideal to find universal 
application. Still, the rivalry observable among men in 
everyday life tends usually rather toward the positive than 
the negative. It is a constructive, energizing, driving force 
which incites us all to do our best and to exert our highest 
efforts in the furtherance of our social or moral or profes- 
sional interests. The reward is the satisfaction of knowing 
that we have done our best; it is also the approval of our 
friends. 

The rivahy of children. The simplest and crudest form 
of the rivalry response is to be seen obviously in children 
who make no conscious efforts to conceal their satisfaction 
in winning out over their fellows, yet who may make the 
most consistent and transparent efforts to do so. Even the 
infant displays a goodly amount of envy (which is the touch- 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 97 

stone of rivalry) when the parental attention and caressing 
chance to fall unduly upon another child. Under such a 
condition it responds by striving actively to win over the 
coveted endearments for itself. Since, however, the rivalry 
response is social in its nature, it is apparent that it does 
not come into its own in children until the dawning of the 
ganging age at seven or eight years. Once it does come to 
occupy a place in the behavior of boys and girls, however, 
the part which it plays is indeed a conspicuous one. You 
will find children striving to rival each other in nearly all the 
activities in which they participate, from the collecting of 
seashells to the pitching of a ball or the hooking of a fish. 
What juvenile fisherman is there, for example, whose heart 
does not lie hke lead within him at the unmatched success of 
a companion in the landing of a trout or an eel or a perch, 
while one's own line hangs limp and lifeless in the water! 
And with what deceit does that hope which springs eternal 
in the human breast continually lead one on to rival one's 
fisherman friend at least in his own imagination! Or sup- 
pose the activity engaged in severally be the discovery of 
the rare four-leaved clover among the other verdant grasses 
and leaves of the dooryard. There are few of us who have 
not some time in our lives passed through the four-leaved 
clover stage, when hour after hour of aimless yet satisfying 
childhood was consumed on one's hands and knees search- 
ing dihgently for the coveted treasure, not because of any 
intrinsic importance in the process or value in the product, 
but merely in order to be able to match the boasted declara- 
tion of a rival with at least one more clover. In a similar 
way note the passionate eagerness with which children search 
through the fields in springtime for the largest bunch of wild 
flowers or the rarest specimen of blossom. 

In general it may be said that the instinct of rivalry in 
children concerns itself with any superlative trait or pos- 
session which one child can boast as opposed to like traits 
or possessions of another. Thus, there is boundless satis- 
faction to the possessor in owning a larger sled, or a fleeter 



98 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

one; in owning a larger cart, or a larger gun, or a better 
bicycle. In a similar way, there is deep satisfaction to the 
child in being able to whittle out the best and shapeliest 
boat, or in rigging it with the most graceful sails; or in being 
able to make the shrillest whistle from an alder stick; or in 
knowing how to fashion the strongest bow and the truest 
arrow; or in knowing how to trill one's voice best — and 
what hours boys spend in practicing this childlike art! There 
is hkewise a deep inner joy in knowing where the fish run 
largest and shiniest; or in knowing where the largest fruit 
and the ripest berries are — and what child does not? — 
or in loiowing how to tie the strongest knot, or to weave 
the longest plait of oak-leaves, or to trap the wiliest wood- 
chuck. And, if these more elevating interests fail, there are 
contests of strength or cleverness a-plenty wherein boys 
can satisfy their thirst for leadership. Inferring that all 
other sources of rivalry had for the time being failed, the 
author not long since was an interested observer of a small 
group of boys who were pitting against each other their 
expectorational strength and agility in determining who of 
them could spit the farthest! Supply of available saliva 
bemg speedily exhausted, this game degenerated after a few 
attempts into a contest to determine who could spit the 
most times in a given period! To such immodest or vulgar 
depths does the thirst to rival one another occasionally 
plunge its possessors! 

It is true for the most part, however, that available fields 
of effort wherein rivalry is possible are all but limitless, and 
children are rarely forced to pit their skill or resources of 
spittmg against one another. Every boy likes to be a leader 
m something. It usually happens, however, that few of them 
are so equipped temperamentally or so natively endowed as 
to make possible the attainment of their desires to this end. 
Most boys cannot be leaders. On the other hand, the great 
mass of children are more or less aUke and so can compete 
with one another in nearly everything. It is only the natural 
leader who is an outcast in the competing. His leadership is 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 99 

taken more or less for granted, and, far from endeavoring to 
outrun or outplay or outwit him, the great mass of children 
are content to pit themselves against their fellows of equal 
qualifications for the purpose of carrying off temporarily 
at least the honors of their striving and competing. It is 
doubtful whether this impulse to excel others ever comes 
consciously into the minds of children. It appears rather to 
compel them without revealing to them its identity. It 
is enough to run and shout and trill and wrestle and jump 
for the sheer pleasure residing in such activities, and the 
pleasure is sufficient reward; but back of it all lurks the 
omnipresent instinct of rivalry. 

Mental rivalry. Rivalry in actual school work where 
mental effort plays the significant role is not, however, so 
easily brought about. Mental keenness and alertness are 
far more recent acquisitions in the life of the race than are 
the purely physical responses; hence they do not so com- 
pellingly influence the behavior of children as do the latter 
forces. An instinct depends for its strength upon the 
length of time which it has existed in the history of the race. 
Thus, the instincts to preserve the organism, to perpetuate 
it, to feed it, and to protect it are among the very oldest and 
strongest agencies in controlling behavior. Rivalry, in its 
mental phase at least, ranks with imitation and modesty and 
the other forms of behavior — influencing agencies which are 
only partially instinctive in their basis. Still, there un- 
doubtedly does exist in children a desire to excel their fel- 
lows in school work and school activities, although it is often 
difiicult to determine in how far other instinctive responses, 
such as display and approbation, come in to assist in the 
matter. 

There can be little question, though, that the pride which 
children display in having their compositions or drawings 
commented on by the teacher, and perhaps hung in con- 
spicuous places about the schoolroom, has a distinct basis in 
the instinct of rivalry. If you have ever observed a class 
of first-grade children during the time in which the teacher 



■ 



100 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

was developing a lesson, you have noted a very interesting 
phase of this rivalry response in the eagerness with which 
the children vied with one another in answering the ques- 
tions asked by the teacher. It did not matter whether they 
knew the facts requested, or indeed that they even under- 
stood the questions asked; every hand was upraised, and 
every hand competed with every other in securing the 
teacher's leave to speak, often to the confusion of the very 
child whose hand was most lively when he was permitted to 
contribute his vaunted share in the lesson. You have 
doubtless seen a myriad of small flying hands gyrated dan- 
gerously near the teacher's face when the youngest children 
were around her in a semicircle, and have perhaps marveled 
that they did not actually smite her in their earnestness. 

Then, too, how children will work for a prize offered by the 
teacher as an incentive to their flagging attention! The 
prize may and should be nothing more than a cross after 
one's name or a star upon the blackboard: it matters little. 
The child who has the largest number of stars is secretly 
and frequently outspokenly envied by those less fortunate- 
and usually envy is sufficient to stimulate the lagging ones 
to redouble their efforts in order to rival the rest. In hke 
manner standing at the head of the class is a blissful though 
momentary privilege for, with the fluctuations of fortune, 
one IS certam to be displaced very soon by the next below,' 
who m turn must yield place shortly to another. 

As the child grows older and passes out of the earlier 
grades and into the upper ones, and ultimately out into 
higher schools or into life, the conscious side of rivalry 
comes to the fore, and now there is more systematic and 
contmued effort to rival others. It does not cease, as we 
saw, with the attainment of maturity, but continues to be a 
strong motivating force within most of us so long as we 
mingle actively with our fellows. Its danger obviously lies 
in the possibility of its making the child selfish and thought- 
less of others in his work or play, traits which, if they con- 
tinue into maturity and adulthood, will wreak havoc with 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 101 

the whole society in which he moves. The only salutary 
rivalry is friendly rivalry. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Report upon any instances of rivalry which you observe among chil- 
dren or groups of children. 

2. Make a list of some good and some bad results of the rivahy impulse. 
Be concrete as far as possible. 

3. Have you observed any incidents of rivahy in animals? 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Would it be wiser for a teacher to encourage rivah-y in school work 
between groups or between individuals? Why? 

2. Recently there was found a teacher who at the beginning of the school 
year offered a valuable prize to that pupil who at the end of the term 
should have made the greatest general progress in school work. What 
was the psychological effect of this upon the pupils? Was its effect 
upon some of them quite different from what it was upon others? 

8. Would there be greater all-round satisfaction if our schools were so 
graded that bright children were associated only with bright, and dull 
only with dull? Can you think of any objections to such a plan? 

4. Does educational value inhere in such activities as school exhibitions 
and entertainments, interschool ball games, school savings banks, 
fairs, and other agencies that tend to promote intellectual or physical 
rivalry among the participants? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Norsworthy, N., and Whitley, M. T. Psychology of Childhood, pp. 
68-70. 

2. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. I, The Original Na- 
ture of Man, pp. 98-100. 



LESSON 16 
INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN (continued) 
II. The Curiosity Response 
What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Evidences of the curiosity response of the children, as shown: 
{a) tSy the questions which they ask 

ifnl^^.i^'? ii *''f * ^^^^ *^^^ ^^"^^^t ^ °e^ facts or prin- 
ciples that they learn. ^ 

(c) By the tendency which the lesson has of being frequently 
side-tracked," owing to some one's desire to push an iTter^ 

estmg thought further. 

(d) By the profoundness of their attention during the most 
mterestmg moments of learning some new and strange fTct 

General characteristics. You have by now doubtless 
begun to suspect that all the instinctive responses are more 
or less closely connected with one another, and this iHc- 

as present in the infant, is a mosaic in which each tendpnp^^ 

tendency. In the case of the curiosity response this con- 
nectedness .s particularly noticeable, for it is closely related 
now to the impulse of general physical activity/now"t 

limp* pTaV" nt at""' °' t ''''"'*^^"^'- -^ "- 'o 1- 
ui hiinpie piay. it is at once the genesis of ptf <^nt,-^>, j ^t, 

energ .ing motive of much of juvLileTetwy t h:fb «„' 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 103 

iriK the conversation, and lo! your concentration is dissipated 
immediately, and you hasten to determme what is being 
said about you. In other words, your curiosity got the 
better of you, and you were compelled, against your will, 
to satisfy it. Or again, suppose some one in the street gives 
the crv of " Fire! " Instantly you hurry to the window and 
look up and down to see where the fire is. At the same time 
you will see others hurrying up the street, led on by the 
same curiosity, and the chances are that you will yourself join 
the ever-growing company of the curious, and that the book 
will be quite forgotten for hours. Witness, too, the attrac- 
tion which the side-show at the fair possesses for the patrons. 
That booth which is the most sensational or lurid m its 
advertising, or before which the loudest-voiced proprietor 
announces the attraction within, is the booth which is cer- 
tain to draw the largest crowd, every one being curious to 
investigate the mysteries within, and the faker reaps a 
golden harvest. Thus gulhble is the average human being 
to the art of the showman! Witness again the rapid increase 
in numbers of the street crowd that gathers near the scene ot 
an accident, or of some show-window exhibition, or even ot 
a piano being moved from a fourth-story window Let one 
person stop, and a second is likely to stop Let one man 
pause to look up at some unusual spectacle and he is im- 
mediately surrounded by a score whose curiosity impels them 
to do hkewise. And then think of the curiosity that we all 
have in investigating some interesting situation or process 
from the inspection of a jail or an insane asylum to that ot 
an automobile factory or a textile mill. 

A great amount of curiosity, too, attaches to old-fashioned 
or historic regions or buildings, as for instance, to the birth- 
place of a great man or woman, and it is always a matter ot 
much interest to the sight-seer to sit in a chair which George 
Washington sat in, or to eat one's luncheon in a grove wherein 
the great and mighty of the earth have eaten and rested 
and frohcked. The strength of this same instinct of curiosity 
is to be observed in the eagerness manifested by most ot us 



1 



104 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

to see a great man, to touch his hand, to hear him speak, and 
perchance have the rare privilege of taking a short walk with 
him or of hstening to his conversation. On the higher levels f | 
of achievement the same force is apparent in the delving 
into science, or history, or literature, or art; in the experi- 
menting and the exploring and investigating which are such 
fascinating fields of effort to all of us, according to our 
abilities. 

Curiosity in children. In earliest infancy the response 
comes into evidence; you have seen it in the intense interest 
which the four-months-old baby takes in examining its 
hands and fingers and toes, for all the world as if they were 
entities quite disconnected from itself. You have seen it, 
too, in the earnest attention which it pays to the sunbeam 
playing upon the floor or trembling on the wall. In a 
similar way the ticking of the clock upon the mantel may 
hold the infant's fluctuating attention for minutes at a time, 
and is sure to attract it a dozen times a day. If another 
baby chances to come to visit the home, its gaze will be 
riveted upon the stranger for perhaps five or ten minutes 
before any further advances are made. Very likely you have 
observed two infants thus accidentally juxtaposed who con- 
tmued to stare at one another until some object more com- 
pelling coaxed their eyes away. We have already noted the 
avidity with which children place everything available in 
their mouths; this, as we pointed out earlier, is in part due 
to the food-getting instinct; it is in part also traceable to 
the mstinct of curiosity. In fact the young infant depends 
quite as much upon his mouth as a sense determiner as he 
does upon his fingers or his eyes or ears. It is only as he 
grows older that he no longer relies for information upon his 
sense of taste or his general oral sense of shape, size, and 
consistency. 

^ Other illustrations of the working of the curiosity response 
in children are not far to seek. The child who takes delic^ht 
in tearing paper is curious as to the nature of paper. The 
child who bangs his rattle upon the floor is curious as to the 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 105 

hardness of the floor or the interior of the rattle. The child 
who studies passing vehicles or stares at strange and un- 
familiar faces is curious as to the nature of vehicles and of 
people's faces in general. One child of three years pulled 
her doll apart with much zeal in order to find out what was 
inside of it. She found that it was only sawdust, but her 
curiosity was satisfied, and that was all that mattered. 
You have probably seen more than one child swinging on 
his gate aimlessly, while all his attention was directed out 
into the passing panorama of life upon the street. That 
child was endeavoring to find out something of the strange 
world in which it found itself. So, too, you have seen chil- 
dren delving in the garden with their small shovels in a 
whole-hearted attempt to solve the unseen mysteries of the 
interior of Mother Earth, and every strange-shaped stone or 
every worm or every bit of bright glass turned up by their 
industrious efforts satisfied a felt want within. Natural 
phenomena are especially interesting to children, and many 
are the questions asked by juvenile inquirers, led on by an 
insatiable thirst after knowledge which should put adults 
to shame, concerning the nature, structure, origin, purpose, 
etc., of the sun, the moon, the stars, the wind, thunder and 
lightning, snow, rain, and hail, and a host of other elements. 
So with animals and insects. W^at child is not totally 
oblivious to all other surroundings who is engrossed in watch- 
ing a toad casting his skin, or a bee humming in a wild-rose 
blossom? It was the great Swiss teacher, Pestalozzi, who 
exclaimed on one occasion while watching his own little 
child, Jakobli, drinking the great truths from the book of 
Nature: "How idle for mere humans to attempt to teach 
children when Nature is their surest teacher ! " And surely 
the gentle Swiss teacher was right. 

You remember the beautiful poem about "The Village 
Smithy," beginning: "Under the spreading chestnut-tree 
the village smithy stands," etc. Do you remember also 
those simple, masterful Hues which depict the children 
"coming home from school" who love to "look in at the 



106 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

open door "? It is the same impelling inner force of curiosity 
which made the children "love to watch the flaming forge," 
and the poet himself well recalled those days long ago when 
he was one of the semicircle of eager onlookers "under the 
spreading chestnut-tree." There was an education in the 
old-time blacksmith shop, now fast passing into obhvion, 
which was invaluable to the boys and girls whose curiosity 
led them to follow all the many processes of shoeing a horse 
or mending a wagon — an education which even the modern 
ever-multiplying garages fail utterly to continue. And yet 
how curious children are about automobiles and engines and 
self-propelling vehicles generally. The writer recalls well 
what a source of endless delight it used to be to him to ride 
in the locomotives which puffed up a spur track in his own 
boyhood town, and with what marvel he watched the ma- 
nipulation and control and mechanics of the tiny engine 
\\itness boys' never-satisfied love of railroad stories as an 
mdication of this same curiosity concerning the many proc- 
esses involved m the operation of a railroad. Besides these 
children are always curious about sealed or tied-up packages 
- as indeed are all of us; they are curious about matches 
and fares; about seeds, and one child actually dug up the 
beans that had been planted a few hours before to see 
whether they were growing all right (!). They are curious, 
too, about the origin of hfe, the meaning of death, religious 
the Delt '^Snificance, and they are curious concerning 

Destructive aspect of the response. But all this thirst 
alter knowledge results sooner or later in the destroying of a 
great many different objects with the purpose of determining 
the substance of which they are made, or the force which 
makes them move, or the source of the sounds which they 
emit. As instances of this destructive phase of curiosity 
may be mentioned the two-year-old who broke his ZZ 
in order to find what made it pop; or the three-yeTr-dd 

" moo ' or 't\;^ "" '' ^^ iT 1° '^^^^^'^^ *^^ -^gi^ of tie 
moo , or the four-year-old who took the clock apart to 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 107 

find out what made it strike; or the six-year-old who broke 
in her doll to search out the mystery of the closing and 
opening of her eyes; or another four-year-old who cut off her 
doll's hair in order to prove whether or not it would grow 
again; or the seven- and eight-year-olds who broke the 
family thermometer by placing the bulb upon the hot stove 
in order to see how high the mercury could be forced to rise 
in the column; or the six-year-old who destroyed his toy 
violin to determine the reason for its making the sound 
which it did; or the five-year-old who cut in the head of his 
drum for the same reason; or the eight-year-old who broke 
the family cuckoo clock in a vain endeavor to induce the 
cuckoo to come out! Besides these and scores of other il- 
lustrations about which you may easily read by studying 
Reference 1, one five-year-old boy tried with all his might and 
main to pry open the jaws of his uncomprehending dog in 
order to find out what made him bark (!). 

And then there are the omnipresent "Why" questions, at 
once the source of joy and misery in the parent and older 
sister or brother. Listen some time when you chance to be 
riding on a trolley car to the variety of questions asked by a 
two-year-old or three-year-old child about the car and the 
conductor and the motorman and the bell and the people and 
the controller and the stopping and the starting and a score 
of other things which come under the observation of the 
indefatigable young student of the mysteries of the trolley 
car. These questions are in themselves an unmistakable 
evidence of the curiosity which rages in the breast of every 
child. It is Nature's way of introducing her child to the 
wonders and the actualities and the potentialities of the 
universe. To evade or falsify would be a positive insult to 
Dame Nature, who merely provides parents and older chil- 
dren in order to satisfy the curiosity of those young and 
tender in years. Once such satisfaction has been given to 
the uttermost, parents and older persons generally lose their 
prime capacities in this world. 

In older children the instinct grows none the less potent 



108 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

as a factor influencing the education of boys and girls. It 
does, however, undergo certain modifications, inasmuch as 
the simpler truths about the universe have by this time been 
learned. But it remains throughout youth and into adult 
life as one of the keenest mental tools available in the future 
citizen's search after knowledge. In science and exploration 
and investigation it is the primary force which suggests 
and guides. 

Its origin in primitive life. Primitive man had always to 
be on the alert against surprise by strange animals or un- 
wonted natural phenomena. Hence any unusual occur- 
rence, such as a stealthy noise, or an approaching object of 
unusual proportions, had necessarily to be accorded strict 
and unwavering attention until its meaning was explained or 
its significance discovered. This was the origin of the in- 
stinct about which we have been studying in this lesson. 
It is based, therefore, in primitive necessity, as have been 
all the other instincts which we have discussed. In modern 
life its need no longer exists as a safeguarding agency against 
surprise from a wary foe or an unfamiliar phenomenon. 
It has rather undergone in the process of thousands of 
generations an evolutionary modification, so that at the 
present time it is concerned with any unknown phenomenon, 
regardless of whether such phenomenon be or be not harm- 
ful or destructive in nature. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Observe an infant for ten minutes, taking special note of all illustra- 
tions of curiosity motives which you see manifested. 

2. What things during the past twenty-four hours have excited your 
curiosity? What steps did you take to satisfy it in each case? 

3. What part has the instinct of curiosity played in past achievements of 
note, such for example as the great discoveries? 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Is the presence of the curiosity response in children of any material 
aid to the teacher? Specifically, in what ways? 

2. How does the socialized school appeal more directly to the instincts 
than is likely to be true where no attempt at socialization is made? 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 109 

3. In a socialized class in civics, the children were discussing the question 
of whether any man who did not habitually vote could be a good 
citizen. The opinion seemed overwhelmingly positive that he could 
not. But a little Swedish girl declared that her father was not allowed 
to vote because he had been born in Sweden. At this a Polish girl 
insisted that her father had been born in Poland, but that he had 
voted last year. The class was quite at sea: apparently the United 
States treated a Polish-American better than a Swedish-American. 
This inference was not, however, entertained long, for it was generally 
agreed that the United States treated all alike. The deepest curiosity 
was aroused, and a committee of three was delegated to confer with 
the local judge in order that the truth of the matter might be found 
out. Might it be possible to make all the instruction of the school- 
room as appealing as this? Why was it appealing? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Hall, G. S. Aspects of Child Life and Education, pp. 84-132; also in 
Pedagogical Seminary, vol. 10, pp. 315-58. 

2. Waddle, C. W. Introduction to Child Psychology, pp. 116-18. 



1 



LESSON 17 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN {corainued) 
12. The Maternal Response 

In animals. You have doubtless at some time or other in 
your life witnessed the distress of a mother bird or a father 
bird or of both when they made the discovery that their 
nest had been blown down or torn down and the nestlings 
within destroyed. For hours, and perhaps for days, the 
parent birds were to be seen hopping disconsolately about 
the vicinity m the vain hope that the lost would be found- 
and for days their mournful songs hovered over the place 
until perhaps you came very near weeping yourself at be- 
holding the sadness and misery of the bereaved. This is an 
Illustration of the maternal instinct, or the mothering instinct 
m birds. But the response is by no means confined to bird 
Mentis found m every higher organism known, although 

whifr^r ^°^.P^™^°^".^e depend largely upon the place 
which the organism occupies in the scale of hfe 

In the hen watching over her brood the same maternal 
instinct .s observable. Let a hawk approach and "ly 
her feathers ruffle up and she may even dart into battle 
against the marauder whilst her chicks scurry to cover 
Or It may be nothmg more than the farmer's wife herself 
who approaches the spot where the brood is burro win. the 
response IS apt to be the same: the hen becomes cross'and 
disgrun led and may even fly passionately at the intruder 
especially if she attempts to take up one of the chicks In 
the same way the mother cow, when her heifer is taken from 
her. manifests symptoms of the most extreme distress and 
usually has m her eyes for days a reproachful look whfch 
aken together with her passionate and long conSued 
lowing, indicates a very nicely developed parentaUns Hncf 
So the cat, deprived of her sizable litter'of tiny kiUerm^^^ 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 111 

longingly and searches about for them for days afterward, and 
may even make attempts at mothering other litters or broods 
as a solace to her grief. During this period she is unusually 
lovable and responds much more readily than usual to the 
caressings of children, as though thankful for the sympathy 
accorded to her. If you will note the pride in the eyes of 
either cat or dog over their offspring you will appreciate far 
better than otherwise the nature of the maternal instinct in 
animals and the influence which it exerts over their behavior 
during the entire period of the helplessness of their young. 

Still, the response lasts only for a brief time. The bird 
soon forgets the robbed nest and the destroyed nestlings ; the 
hen within a few weeks actually forsakes her brood and never 
afterward has anything to do with it; the cow is despondent 
for a season, but is shortly resigned to her loss; the kitten is 
soon weaned, and after that the close relationship between it 
and the mother cat exists no longer. It appears to be only 
in human beings that the maternal instinct abides and en- 
dures across all gulfs and beyond all separations. Herein is 
one of the gentle evidences of the towering superiority of 
man over the animal. The long period of infancy, to which 
we have referred before, has operated in the past ages of the 
race to bind the family more and more closely together so 
that its ties are never broken. 

In adult human beings. To the stimulus child, a woman 
responds by smiling at, petting, fondling, snuggling, etc., 
regardless of whether or not it be her own offspring. To 
the same situation, a man responds in a less demonstrative 
manner, but none the less interestedly by smiling at, watch- 
ing, and perhaps stooping to talk with it. If, for example, 
you chance to be riding on a street-car, you will notice that 
the adult occupants are not concerned with studying the 
grouchy gentleman buried behind his newspaper, nor the 
lady reading the latest novel, nor the party engrossed with 
his own thoughts; rather the unoccupied riders are watching 
with deep interest the actions of the three-year-old who is 
now looking out of the window, now staring hard at the bell- 



I 



112 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

rope, now asking a multitude of questions of its mother, and 
now venturing hesitatingly across the aisle to be friendly 
with some one to whom it is particularly drawn. It is as 
though we adults had within us keen memories of the lost 
paradise of our own childhood, and were eager to let those 
memories be revived by the spectacle of other infants still 
in that mystic and delicious age. As a matter of fact, how- 
ever, it is probably the dominance within us of the mater- 
nal instinct, more than any other force, which draws our 
attention involuntarily to the little child. Nay, even your 
grouchy gentleman will sooner or later withdraw himself 
perforce from the depths of his newspaper and watch the 
infant in spite of himself, as will also the novel-reader and 
the introspective party. Such is the appeal of innocence 
and infancy to us all. The child crying bitterly upon the 
street is the infallible stimulus which prompts every one 
within range of its cry to pause beside the heart-broken one 
and to sympathize with and mother it. It is a response as 
old as society itself. 

And then think of the tremendous appeal which the story 
of an unhappy or misunderstood or repressed child has for 
all of us. If you have read the story of Little Nell in Dick- 
ens's Old Curiosity Shop, and have followed the little waif 
toiling about the rough countryside with none but poor old 
Grandfather Trent to support and comfort her, your heart 
must have been stirred within you to the beauty and no- 
bility of the child's soul, and the mother instinct within you 
yearned over the tiny, brave little creature. And so with 
Oliver Twist, and Little Dorrit, and Paul Dombey. And 
so with every other child of fiction for whom the author 
succeeds m creating sympathy and love in his readers. 
Then there are the orphan, and the foundling, and the de- 
formed and the crippled and the poverty-pinched, across 
whom we come and among whom we move to a greater 
or less degree in our everyday hves; the maternal within 
us overpowers us at times when we contemplate unhappiness 
or hmitation in any form in the innocent children. Perhaps 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 113 

the suffering of the children of France, and Belgium, and 
Serbia, and Armenia, and all the other war-swept lands of 
Europe and Asia, caused more realistic appreciation of the 
horrors of an unjust war waged against children as well as 
nations than did any other factor before our own entrance 
into the struggle for right. Even the sight of a suffering, 
tearful childish face is a spectacle which few of us can en- 
dure without immediately taking steps to bring relief and 
happiness and proper joy back to it. The maternal is one 
of the very noblest of all human instincts. 

The maternal instinct in children. Of course the greatest 
illustration of the maternal response in children is to be 
found in the doll-play of girls — and boys, too, for boys 
enjoy dolls almost as much as do girls. Dr. Hall and 
Dr. A. Caswell Ellis found in their study of dolls that 82 per 
cent of all boys and 98 per cent of all girls under six years of 
age admitted their fondness for doll-play. Naturally, how- 
ever, boys outgrow dolls more quickly than do their sisters, 
and so we are apt to infer that dolls are girls' toys only. We 
have already referred to the collection of dolls made by one 
child to the number of thirty-two before she was ten years 
of age. There are very few girls, indeed, who do not num- 
ber among their choicest possessions of childhood at least 
one or two of them. And even in later girlhood and in young 
womanhood it often happens that one will bring down her 
childhood's dolls from the attic or from some forgotten 
drawer and pass long hours on some rainy day, living over 
again the sweet memories of girlhood and girlhood's dolls. 
Ask yourself honestly whether you still remember your old 
dolls and still take secret delight in fondling them; your 
reply will be, I am sure, in the affirmative. The maternal 
instinct is strong in every normal person, and not infre- 
quently continues to find its satisfaction in the dolls of yore 
until it finds its fullest consummation in the actual posses- 
sion of children. 

The material out of which dolls are constructed matters 
little to children ordinarily, although wax, paper, and china 



114 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS ^1 

seem to be the favorite; if, however, such are not forth- 
coming, then rag dolls will do just as well. In the study 
of dolls referred to above, it was found that children made 
their own dolls often out of pillows, sticks, bottles, corncobs 
clotlies-pins, and even cats. Half the delight appears to be 
m dressing these strange dolls, made while one waits, as it 
were. And yet there can be little doubt that down deep in 
the heart of every girl there is a yearning for at least one doll 
of the finest material and the costliest apparel, for exhibi- 
tion purposes if for no other. You recall doubtless the 
story of Cosette in Les Miserahles. Poor Cosette, who had 
never possessed a doll in her life, stood in the gathering 
dusk by the bright windows of the toy-shop next to Thenar- 
dier's tap-room and gazed long and ardently, yet hopelessly, 
upon the beautiful pink doll stretching its arms out toward 
her from withm the window, httle dreaming that ere another 
day had passed this treasure, this delicious breath from 
heaven, would be reposing in her own thin, emaciated arms. 
iJut so it did, as it turned out. 

But after all the large, exquisite doll is not indispensable, 
and you will doubtless find children who never possess any- 
thing more wonderful than a small rag doll, or perhaps a 
small china one, and such modest possessions are apt to be 
just as well beloved as the more elaborate and costly ones 
i^ven when broken and lacerated and discolored beyond all 
recognition, a doll is still a doll, and often the oldest and 
least attractive from our point of view is the favorite from 
the child s Further evidence of the mothering instinct 
toward dolls is to be found in the fact that dolls tire, grow 
sick, require the physician's skill, feel hunger and thirst, cold 
and heat, and respond generally to varying stimuli just the 
same as does the possessor! As a result they must be put to 

nfl'K^"f ![ ^ ^•'''P'' T''' ^^ t^^^^^ly ministered unto, 
must be fed and given to drink, and must have their clothes 
properly regulated as to chmate exactly as solicitously as 
their own mothers oversee their own welfare. Thus is the 
mother love m its inci^iency flooded freely upon the doU 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOK OF CHILDREN 115 

Besides, dolls make good sympathetic companions, and 
many a child's heart is poured out into the unheeding ear 
of some ragged, unkempt doll with all the passion and the 
abandon of which an abused child is capable. Or again, 
the moody child scolds and punishes the doll for some un- 
toward conduct, and perchance puts it to bed supperless and 
kissless until the morrow brings forgetfulness and forgive- 
ness. Toilets are carefully made by the child-mother, from 
manicuring the nails of the " child " to walking out with it in 
the carriage in order that the fresh air and lively surround- 
ings may refresh it. Sometimes, too, there is a death in the 
doll family, and then with all solemnity and sorrow the tiny 
corpse is laid in the ground amid all fitting ceremony and 
the dirt is piled high above the bier, with perhaps a handful 
of wild flowers added to heighten the effect and make it the 
more realistic. 

This same maternal instinct, or the tendency to mother 
all smaller creatures, especially when they are in extremity, 
is to be observed in the ready sympathy which children feel 
for one another or for animals. For example, children are 
almost always interested in cats and dogs, and the usage 
which these long-suffering creatures often receive at their 
hands is far from gentle. Children like nothing else bet- 
ter than to fondle and cuddle and play with a cat, or a 
dog. Occasionally, too, the sight of a child crying is the 
stimulus which incites another child, perhaps a stranger, 
to falter shyly up to the unhappy one and offer a heart full 
of sympathy to her. The writer has known of more than 
one case in which this sort of thing has taken place, and 
wherein the sequel was the bursting into tears of the sympa- 
thizer and the spectacle of two children who had never seen 
each other before fast locked in one another's arms and 
crying as though both hearts would break! There is no 
impulse to behavior more noble and ennobling than this 
mothering instinct, fast embedded in the life of every child. 



n 



116 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORINIAL SCHOOLS 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Observe and report upon the mother instinct in some domestic anitoal 
or pet. 

2. Note the interest which any chance group of people will manifest in a 
child. 

3. Recall your own early experience with dolls. What is your present 
attitude toward them? 

4. It has been often reported to the writer that the interest which chil- 
dren used to manifest in dolls is slowly waning, and that the modern 
child cares little for doll-play. If this is your observation, can you 
account for the change in attitude? Is the tendency away from dolls 
a beneficial one? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Hall, G. S. Aspects of Child Life and Education, pp. 157-204; also in 
Pedagogoical Seminary, vol. 4, pp. 129-75. 

2. NorsMorthy, N., and Whitley, M. T. Psychology of Childhood, 
pp. 59-63. 

3. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original Nature 
of Man, pp. 81-85. 



LESSON 18 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN {continued) 

13. The Imitative Response 

What to hole for in the observation period : 

1. Exactly what part, if any, conscious imitation plays in the 
lesson. If possible, determine in what subjects of study 
imitation is a more important means of learning than in 
others. In what lessons is it most important? Least impor- 
tant? 

2. Any evidences of reflex imitation. Of social imitation. 

The nature of imitation. There appear to be two distinct 
sorts of imitation, or rather two distinct kinds of forces 
which result in the imitative act. The first of these we may 
term reflex imitation, the second acquired or complex imita- 
tion. Only the first of these is instinctive in its nature, the 
second being the result of practice or of training. The 
former is natural, spontaneous, and innate; it is therefore 
uncontrollable: the latter comes about as the sequel to 
experience, and is therefore allied with habit, which is a 
learned rather than an unlearned form of behavior. In 
general, regardless of whether the imitative act be reflex or 
acquired, the term imitation may be defined as the tendency 
of tfie organism to copy or reproduce the actions or behavior of 
others. The response is universal among all human beings 
of normal evolution, and lies at the basis of much of their 
progress as well as of much of their stagnation. In the case 
of the simpler, reflex form of imitation, the response is naive, 
direct, and immediate; in the case of the complex, learned 
imitative acts, the response may be more artificial, less 
direct, and more subject to conscious control. Let us con- 
sider some of the more obvious imitative responses of adults 
and children, in order better to understand the difference 
between reflex and learned imitation. 



118 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

Imitation in adults. Imitation in adult human beings 
is largely of the learned or acquired sort. If you will stop 
to ask yourself through what agencies you have learned to 
talk, write, play the piano, or study a lesson, you will no 
doubt be forced to the conclusion that the secret of your 
learning any art lay at least to a considerable degree in 
imitating some one else. True, this may not have been al- 
ways conscious, but neither on the other hand was it reflex 
and involuntary. Fancy one's learning cleverness or skUl 
m any performance because one cannot help but imitate 
reflexly! Consciously or unconsciously, however, we learn 
to govern behavior largely through imitation of our com- 
panions, or teachers, or friends. Ordinarily the motive be- 
hmd imitative acts is either the satisfaction which will ac- 
crue to the organism after it has imitated, or else it is the 
social approval which will be vouchsafed as a result. Take 
for example the habits of courtesy and politeness or good 
form. We learn to pay homage to these established rules 
of conduct in order to escape the censure of society or, more 
positively, in order to win the " well done " of society Such 
behavior as lifting the hat upon meeting a lady, or eating 
with the fork, or dressing modestly, or allowing precedence 
to age IS acquired by the individual primarily in order that 
the onlooker — which means society — may approve He 
who takes liberties with established custom receives justly 
the condemnation of his fellows, whether it be in the matter 
of his dress, or his table manners, or what not. Originality 
m the realm of custom and politeness, or in other words a 
failure to imitate recognized good form, rarely receives the 
commendation of society. And yet there is undoubtedly a 
danger in slavishly and continually imitating the established 
virtues of custom. The Chinese, for instance, because all 
education for them consisted until recently in glorification of 
the past ages and their civilization, remained for centuries 
a backward nation and a stagnant society. Can you think 
of other illustrations of imitation in adult hfe aside from the 
realm of custom? 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 119 

Imitation in children. In earliest infancy the imitative 
responses are purely of the primary sort; that is, they are 
simple reflex copyings of the behavior which they observe 
in their nurses or their parents or other companions. A 
smile lingering upon the face of the observer is likely to be 
reflected almost at once in the face of the baby. In the 
same way, a frown may be the stimulus which will set the 
infant a-frowning; as may also any change in facial expres- 
sion find imitated reproduction in the infant's face. In- 
fants during the first months of life take great delight in 
watching people's faces, and whenever, as often happens, 
some one purposely purses up his lips, or winks his eyes, or 
frowns, or smiles, or twists his face into various shapes and 
angles in order to amuse and delight it, the infant responds 
by doing about the same things, with variations. It is 
difficult to determine in how far the baby may consciously 
try in a rudimentary way to imitate expressions of face in 
surrounding people; the probabilities are, however, as we 
said, that the tendency to imitate them is purely reflex and 
uncontrollable — at least for several months of life. The 
writer has recently had under observation the case of a 
three-year-old baby who habitually draws down the corners 
of its mouth and flattens out its nose, and has done so ever 
since its grandfather two years ago did that very thing with 
his own mouth and nose, to the hilarious approval of the 
child. From an original reflex imitation, the response has 
now developed into a habit which is very disagreeable and 
causes the parents no end of embarrassment, for the child 
is as likely to make up a face at a perfect stranger as at its 
own sister or brother. 

It is probable, too, that the earliest attempt on the part 
of an infant to control his babbling and prattle in the interest 
of articulate language is largely a reflex imitation of the 
language of' surrounding folks. But if so it is soon sub- 
merged in the more complex process of language develop- 
ment as an acquired form of behavior. Imitation, however, 
continues to play a highly important part in the evolution 



120 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 



of a child's speech, although it is no longer motivated by the 
immediate and reflex tendency. 



11 

It is apparent, then, that imitation as a pure instinct is M 
very hmited term, applying only to those responses which 
are not learned by the child. Very shortly imitation be- 
comes either conscious or purposeful, with a distinct end in 
view. I.e., satisfaction or approval. Take by way of illus- 
tration the writing process. If you have ever watched a 
child learning to write from a copy or over a copy you dis- 
covered that he was using a great deal of energy, and that 
perhaps his tongue and mouth were at work almost as hard 
as his fingers. This is a case of voluntary imitation, entered 
into with the more or less present idea of learning to write. 
Another illustration of voluntary imitation may be seen in 
the conscious effort of a child to build a tower of blocks like 
the one constructed by a playmate. So, too, constructing 
a toy trom a pattern, or drawing a map from the geography 
or imitating the whistle of a locomotive are all types of 
voluntary imitation. 

There is scarcely an object which children see that they 
do not in some way consciously endeavor to imitate. For 
example, sight of an airship incites a boy to convert an 
umbrella into an air craft on a windy day; boats or trains 
are reproduced in a variety of ways, from paper representa- 
tions to strings of chairs and vociferous whistlings and blow- 
ings oft of steam from laughing mouths; a sling-shot of a new 
design IS new for a day only; the next day every boy pos- 
sesses one of his own manufacture. Even the gait of a 
cripple or deformed or aged person becomes the basis for 
imitation on the part of thoughtless children. Voice-trilling 
IS a fine art among boys and girls, each one striving with all 
his might and main to reproduce the clear, not unmusical 
note in the best triller's product. Attitudes, postures, 
prejudices hkings and dislikings, sports, recreations, lan^ 
guage barbarities (and niceties), ejaculatory expressions, 
— all find imitators in youths as in adults. Such imitated 
responses we may term the products of spontaneous or social 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 121 

imitation, i.e., forms of imitation which while not voluntarily 
embraced come about as the inevitable result of the exam- 
ples and influences and ways of thinking with which the 
child is surrounded. 

Among the products of spontaneous imitation which come 
to have broad and lasting influence over the maturity as 
well as the childhood and youth of children should be men- 
tioned religion, politics, and education. In the case of the 
first of these, religion, it is doubtless a matter of common 
observation to you that children invariably embrace the 
faith and belief and even the denomination of their parents. 
Rare indeed is it that a child is proselyted to another creed. 
So with politics. If the father be a Republican, the son is 
almost sure to be. Political affiliations are after all more 
the product of heredity and environment than they are of 
sound individual reasoning. Who of all the great mass of 
voters to-day could state the fundamental differences in be- 
lief which exist between the two great political parties of the 
United States? Or who of all the membership of churches 
could state why they affiliate as they do.f* But perhaps most 
interesting of all is the social imitation apparent in educa- 
tion. The son of a business man looks forward to a career 
in his father's business; a professional man's son often seeks 
a livelihood in the profession of his father, and perhaps his 
grandfather. More directly, the language of the family and 
the schoolroom is the language of the child; the habits of 
home and school become in like manner the habits of the 
child; the attitudes toward life or any specific problems or 
departments of life which youth assume are likely to be 
assumed as the direct heritage of the surroundings in which 
they grew up. Children tend to imitate the mannerisms 
and the language and the conduct of those whom they love; 
how significant therefore are the qualifications of the teacher 
who is to win their love and hence to modify their entire 
lives and mould them after her own! 

Imitation in animals. While experiments performed with 
animals tend to show in certain cases slight evidences of 



122 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NOKMAL SCHOOLS 

imitation in a rudimentary form, it is still doubtful whether 
imitation plays any significant part in their lives. You may 
have seen the chicks scurry to cover at the warning cry of 
the mother hen upon the approach of a hawk. In this 
activity one chick appears to imitate somewhat the be- 
havior of the rest. It is doubtful, however, in how far there 
is any real imitative function operating, and in how far 
the response is purely to the instinct of self-preservation. It 
is very likely that the latter explanation is the correct one. 
At any rate, wherever there appears to be plausibihty in 
assuming the presence of imitativeness in animals, such 
imitative tendency is always connected with actions in 
themselves instinctive. 

In order to demonstrate the presence or absence of imita- 
tion as a significant factor in determining the behavior of 
animals, several hundreds of experiments have been made 
and reported by various investigators from time to time. 
It would be idle to attempt here to enter into a summary of 
any number of these. Perhaps the best known experiments 
are those performed by Thorndike and Yerkes and Lloyd 
Morgan. The first of these investigators, using cats as his 
subjects, found that they could get out of a puzzle-box no 
more quickly after watching a cat who knew how than they 
could before. In another experiment Thorndike demon- 
strated the inabihty of the monkey to open a box any more 
mtelligently after seeing the experimenter open it than 
previously. Yerkes, working with dancing mice, concluded 
that imitation played no role in their behavior. In general, 
while a few investigators beheve somewhat to the contrary' 
It appears that there is little if any evidence of any signif- 
icant imitative capacity in the animal series. To be able 
to imitate seems to imply the existence in the mind of the 
actor of an idea of the result to be attained, — an existence 
which psychology is not yet ready to accept. It is true 
however, that throughout the animal series there exist 
crude forms of instinctive imitation, which occur "when 
the sight or sound of one animal's performing a certain act 



INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN 123 

operates as a direct stimulus, apparently through an inborn 
nervous connection, to the performance of a similar act by 
another animal." The hen, for example, teaching her chicks 
to pick up food particles, pecks at them herself, takes them 
up into her own mouth and immediately drops them again, 
clucking encouragingly the while, in an endeavor to teach 
her brood to eat. Lloyd Morgan finds from his own experi- 
ments that instinctive actions, such as these, are performed 
earlier if imitation has been possible. About all we can 
say is, then, that an example decreases slightly the time in 
acquiring certain responses which are in themselves instinc- 
tive in nature. It is possible that imitation plays no vital 
part in the animal series. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Make a list of all the activities you know of which depend to a con- 
siderable extent upon the imitating of an example or copy. 

2. Observe a young child for ten minutes, paying special attention to any 
imitated behavior in evidence. 

3. What is meant by a "puzzle-box" and how is it used? Report upon 
at least one experiment in which it was employed. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. What are some qualities in a teacher which boys and girls may safely 
imitate? 

2. Is there danger that children who are encouraged to imitate, in com- 
position, style, etc., for example, may lose their own originality? Is it 
possible for one who has never imitated to be original? 

3. Is imitation as a prime motive a valuable process? For example, is 
there any real educational value in a child's impersonating Hiawatha, 
or Miles Standish? Or of a sixth-grade class presenting in tableaux 
The First Thanksginng, or Lincoln Freeing the Slaves? Or of depict- 
ing in pageantry the story of some mythical or historical event? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, p. 360; also pp. 416-18. 

2. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original Na- 
ture of Man, chap. 8. 

3. Washburn, M. F. The Animal Mind, pp. 237-46. 



LESSON 19 

THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF BEHAVIOR 
I. Emotions and Instincts 
What to look for in the observation period : 

1. Evidences of feeling or emotion in the children. 

2. Incidents during the class period in which either marked sat- 
isfaction or marked dissatisfaction is apparent on the part of 
any of the pupils. 

S. Whether such factors as temperature of the room, attitude of 
the teacher, smooth or unsteady progress of the lesson, etc., 
have any bearing upon the affective side of pupils' behavior. 

The relationship of emotions to instincts. We have now 
completed our survey of the more important instincts of 
children, and in this lesson we turn our attention to a dis- 
cussion of the feeling side of behavior. We have seen in 
earher lessons that the nervous system of the child at birth 
has somewhere impressed upon it connection tendencies 
which impel action whenever the appropriate stimuli are 
presented. Sight of other children at play, for example, 
arouses the play response in any child; the onset of the hunt- 
ing instinct leads the boy to indulge in hunting responses; 
the presence in the environment of small interesting objects 
compel the child of seven or eight to collect; and so with all 
the other forms of instinctive behavior: given the stimulus, 
the inborn tendency to respond in a more or less definite 
way operates and the child responds. Now you will recall 
that a part of our definition of instinct formulated in the 
fifth lesson (q.v.) pointed to an emotional accompaniment 
of instinctive activity. We said not only that an instinct 
is an inborn tendency to respond to definite stimuli in a 
definite way which is more or less common to all members 
of the species, but also that there was usually connected with 
the response some form of emotional supplement. Up to this 



THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF BEHAVIOR 125 

point we have concerned ourselves merely with interpreting 
the first part of the definition, i.e., that tendency to respond 
to play stimuli, and migratory stimuU, and ownership 
stimuli by playing and by migrating and by owning. In 
this and the two following lessons we are to be concerned 
with the final aspect of our definition, the emotional phase 
of instinct. 

If you will observe either a single child or a group of 
children who are engaged in some form of activity — it 
matters httle what, because children do Uttle that is not 
almost purely the prompting of some instinct — you will be 
struck with the fact that they are either enjoying or are not 
enjoying the activity in which they are engaged. Most 
likely they will be enjoying it, rather than the opposite. 
If you could discover no other clue to their states of mind, 
the shouting and the shrieking and the laughter should be 
sufficient to indicate it to you. In other words, regardless 
of whether they are positively happy or unhappy at their 
play, their behavior informs you that there is a feeling side 
to their responses which extends beyond the mere physical 
running and collecting and throwing. There is a satisfac- 
tion in the free expression of their inner promptings or a 
dissatisfaction when those promptings find repression or 
thwarting in their expression. 

Herein lies the very heart of the emotional side of life. 
Our feeling tone may be said to range from the purest pleas- 
ure on the one hand, through an apparently neutral zone 
to the most abject pain on the other. In reality, however, 
there is probably no absolutely neutral zone of feehng; 
hence all our emotional experiences are divisible into two 
categories: those which are satisfying and those which are 
the reverse of satisfying — disagreeable or annoying. When 
we are in the former state of mind our instinctive or ac- 
quired interests are finding satisfactory and appropriate 
expression; when we are in the latter state, they are find- 
ing repression or thwarting. Contrast, for example, the 
emotional state of the boy who is stealing exultingly upon 



125 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS M 

an unsuspecting comrade with the intention of shouting 
with all his might suddenly behind his shoulder, and the 
emotional state of the same boy who is interrupted at the 
most dazzling moment when he is opening his mouth to 
shout by the sound of his mother's seventh warning to 
hurry up and do his errand at the store! Or again, contrast 
the mental states of the girl reading the last chapter of 
Little Women, and of the same girl peremptorily summoned 
from her reading to pare potatoes for the soup! Interest, 
in other words, abides in the satisfying behavior, and when 
interest ceases altogether there ensues a feeling of ennui 
which is the reverse of satisfying. It matters little what the 
nature of the work is in which we are engaged: the emotional 
supplement of our behavior will inevitably be some degree 
of pleasure or some degree of displeasure, depending upon 
the presence or absence of interest, either immediate or 
remote. 

The earliest emotions. We have already seen that the 
child in the cradle smiles and gurgles when it is comfortable, 
and frets and perhaps cries when it is uncomfortable. Per- 
haps we could find no better classification of emotions than 
this: the comfort or discomfort attending our work or our 
play. In the very earliest weeks of life the satisfaction or 
comfort of the baby is conditioned almost in toto upon the 
readiness with which all its immediate physical needs are 
ministered to. When it has been fed properly, there are 
evidences of satisfiedness; when its clothing is neither too 
thin nor too plentiful, there are similar evidences of satis- 
faction; when the temperature of the nursery is well regu- 
lated, the infant is likewise comfortable. Indeed it is prob- 
able that the earliest pleasures which the child experiences 
are after all merely the absence of pain, or in other words 
vague, inarticulate feelings of content and well-bemg. 
But very shortly the infant begins to react toward his sur- 
roundings in a more positive way. There are the bright 
colors in the carpet which are to be studied in fascination; 
there are the patches of sunlight upon the floor which chal- 



THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF BEHAVIOR 127 

lenge inquiry; there are the toys and picture books to be 
manipulated and their secrets investigated; there are the 
flowers in the vase and the designs in the wall paper to be 
wonderingly traced. And in all of these diverse undertak- 
ings there is manifested varying degrees of satisfaction and 
dissatisfaction, from the delighted smiles which light up the 
infant's face when its roving eyes are caught by the glitter of 
the bright toy or the colored picture to the scowls and cries 
of disapproval when toy or picture book is peremptorily 
taken away from it. As the child grows into its second year 
there become apparent in its behavior these and other 
emotional reactions accompanying its various activities. 
The more selfish or individualistic emotions, like fear, an- 
ger, joy, sorrow, jealousy and envy make their appearance 
before the more altruistic and social responses: sympathy 
and love. 

Paver noctumus. One of the most interesting illustra- 
tions of the earlier emotional responses of the child is to be 
found in the so-called "night fear" — 'pavor noctumus — 
often observable in very young children. The child startles 
the household in the small hours of the night by emitting 
a piercing scream, perhaps followed by a series of them. 
To the anxious nurse who hurries to the bedside the child 
presents a spectacle of frozen horror as its eyes stare fixedly 
into the corner of the room. Even after it is awakened it 
continues to tremble and perhaps moan and cry for several 
minutes before it can be calmed and put back to sleep. It 
is probable that the cause of this strange affection lies in 
disagreeable dreams which the child is having, induced no 
doubt by stories of wild animals or "bogy men" to which it 
has listened during the day. Whatever be the explanation, 
however, the nature of the emotion is unmistakable. 

Jealousy. We referred in a former lesson to jealousy, or 
envy, as a common emotion of childhood. In general it may 
be said that this emotion is aroused when one's pleasures or 
rights, either real or fancied, are usurped by others. In 
the very young child symptoms of it are first seen in connec- 



123 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

tion with the attitude of the parent toward another child 
either of the same family or of another. If undue or unnec- 
essary attention is paid to the other child, or especially if 
any protestations of endearment are vouchsafed to it, 
jealousy becomes at once apparent in the scowling face and 
perhaps the angry cry of the child thus cheated of his 
imagined rights. Another situation in which jealousy comes 
to the fore in child life is found in the envy of one child mani- 
fested toward a more fortunate one who possesses a new 
pair of skates, or a new sled, or a better cart, or a newer pair 
of shoes, or a bicycle, or a velocipede. Incidentally, we 
adults are by no means free from this vice, although through 
long years of denial and the cultivation of control and po- 
liteness we are usually more successful in covering up our 
envy of others than is the more naive and transparent child. 
In it, desire goes logically and inevitably over into jealousy. 
But not only are possessions the object of envy; skills and 
abilities are likewise often the causes of jealousy on the part 
of a child more meagerly endowed or less practiced. Con- 
sider, for example, the envy in which are held the child who 
can pitch the straightest and speediest ball, and the child 
who can learn his piece the most quickly, and the child who 
can climb the tree or flag pole the fastest, or swim the stream 
most easily. It is fortunate that the pangs of jealousy in the 
simple-hearted child are usually merged in the admiration 
which he genuinely feels for even his superior in skill or in 
possessions. Were it not so, unhappy indeed would be the 
lot of most children, enviers as well as envied. Still, child- 
hood's mask of repression is so thin and transparent that 
the vital forces regulating behavior can never be entirely 
concealed. 

Joy and sorrow. Childhood is happily rather a time of 
joy than a time of sorrow. The instincts, clamoring for 
expression, usually find little check in young people, and 
hence a feeling state of satisfaction or pleasurableness is 
more predominant in them than is one of unpleasantness. 
It is true that in the past history of the race this condition 



THE EMOTIONAL SmE OF BEHAVIOR 129 

of childhood has not always obtained; nor does it to-day 
among all peoples. But in most modern civilized communi- 
ties children are able to extract more happiness. than un- 
happiness from life. Witness, for example, the exquisite 
joy of baseball, or of tag, or of hunting, or migrating, or of 
tunneling in the snow, or of sailing one's tiny boat on the 
pond, or of camping in the forest. There is little repression 
in all this; rather it is expression to the uttermost, and there 
is even a transcendent joy in the tired muscles and aching 
shoulders resulting. Even in fighting there is a sort of 
exaltation which is akin to joy in one's strength and pride 
in one's skill in defense or offense. 

Still, there are times of despondency and unrest and un- 
certainty and even despair in the happiest childliood. The 
death of a pet dog, or cat, or rabbit, is likely to initiate a 
period of exquisite pain in the saddened young owner. Or 
again, the early days of school life, coming as they do after 
six or seven years of happy existence in which one was in 
large measure one's own master, not infrequently are days of 
pining for the free and unhampered life of the out-of-doors 
where the call of nature and of play is deliciously insistent. 
It may be that you can recall some glad, free day in your 
own early school life when you fled from the repression and 
constraint of the schoolroom out into the woods or the 
fields, but so planned your self-enacted holiday that the 
usual four o'clock hour found you trudging circumspectly 
home! Such is the nature of children! And then, too, con- 
sider the disappointment of young people when the long- 
waited picnic morning dawns over a gloomy earth and above 
a raining sky; or when one's dearest chum is required to stay 
at home to help his father on the day above all others when 
a fishing trip to the adjacent stream had been planned. It 
is not necessary to multiply incidents of the encroachment of 
sorrow of a more or less poignant nature upon the otherwise 
joyous life of childhood. Look back into your own youth 
and you will doubtless find many a day which was made 
dark and dreary within by some repression or limitation 



130 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS^ 

which interposed between what desire willed and what 
authority or incipient judgment decreed. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Look up and report upon as many theories of emotion as you can find 
references to. 

2. Observe an infant for half an hour, paying special attention to the 
feeling side of his behavior. In what ways were his apparent emotions 
related to instincts operating at the time? 

3. Think back into your early childhood and try to recall the happiest 
and the unhappiest days which you ever lived through. Introspect 
and endeavor to determine why certain experiences were far more 
tinged with happiness or with sorrow than were others. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. What would be some situations in the schoolroom which might favor 
the outcropping of the jealousy response? Through what indiscre- 
tions might the teacher herself be the innocent cause of such response? 
What faulty methods of teaching might bring it to pass? 

2. Should a teacher strive always to make school work so interesting to 
the children that they are perforce always happy? Is there any 
pedagogic virtue in chronic dissatisfaction and unhappiness on the 
part of the pupil? Where such chronic disaffection exists, is it neces- 
sarily the fault of the teacher? 

3. Does the socialized school, as you know it, tend to keep children in- 
terested and happy in their work? Does it also relieve the teacher 
somewhat? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, pp. 301-08; also chap. 14. 

2. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Studies in Psychology, chap. 7. 

3. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original Nature 
of Man, chap. 9. 

4. Watson, J. B. Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, 
pp. 194-202. 



LESSON 20 

THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF BEHAVIOR {continued) 

2. Fear and Anger 

The four great human emotions. Perhaps the greatest of 
all our emotional responses are fear, anger, love, and sympa- 
thy. The first two of these, fear and anger, are likely to be 
selfish or individual in their reference; the last two tend 
toward the altruistic. 

Fear. If you endeavor to think back into your earliest 
childhood you will undoubtedly recall a great number of 
situations which invariably aroused within you the fear 
response. Indeed, few children grow up to adulthood with- 
out having been at some time or other afraid of something 
or somebody. One of the commonest sources of fear in 
children, as you may remember from your own childhood, 
appears to be darkness. There is something awesome and 
uncanny in a dark room where shadows play uncertainly 
about in the gloom, and where every chair and every table 
seems strangely endowed with corporeal existence. The 
same holds true of the out-of-doors at midnight, as poor 
Ichabod Crane discovered to his despair on that memorable 
evening spent at the home of the fair Katrina van Tassel. 
Under the magic spell of darkness and night the imagination 
is likely to endow every stone and every tree, and even every 
corner of one's room with life and movability. Even the 
changing shadows seem almost to breathe at times, and the 
innocent furniture undergoes the most fantastic transforma- 
tions under the lugubrious touch of night. No doubt you 
can still recall your childish dread to leave the cheery living- 
room in the early evening when bedtime came, and to mount 
the creaking stairs to the silent room above. This was 
particularly true if you lived in the country where there was 
no friendly electric light to be switched on at the bottom of 



132 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

tlie stairs. Or it may be that you can recall the trepidation 
with which you used to pass the cemetery at nightfall, as 
though the spirits of the departed might accost you and 
require placating at your hands. Parents are very often 
guilty of increasing this natural, instinctive dread of the 
dark which exists in all of us by locking their ill-behaved 
children in dark closets or lonely rooms as punishment for 
some misdeed committed. Besides, they do not hesitate to 
threaten them on occasion that the goblins, or' the "bogy 
man," or some other spirits of the darkness and night will 
carry them off if they fail to conduct themselves discreetly. 
Thus in one way or another the dark is made to hold added 
terrors to the credulous mind of the child. Ghost stories 
told during the day may linger in the unconscious memories 
at nighttime and multiply this fear of darkness a hundred 
fold. 

Thunder storms, too, are very often sources of dread to 
children who are led to imitate reflexly the nervousness of 
their elders. Consequently even mild storms may subse- 
quently and habitually arouse in them the most exquisite 
fear and the most unhappy foreboding, which are never con- 
quered and which may actually come to color the whole of 
their mental lives. On the other hand, children growing up 
among older people who show no agitation during thunder 
storms may go through life without ever being really afraid 
of this remarkable phenomenon of nature. It is not our 
purpose here to extend the list of situations in the face of 
which fear is likely to be aroused. Suffice it to repeat, as we 
have already said, that nearly all children are more or less 
fearful of something or somebody at some time or other] in 
their early years. They may, and often do, outgrow one 
fear, only to fall victim to another. In the case of timid 
children, or those of a nervous diathesis, life may become at 
times utterly miserable owing to the number and persistence 
of their fears. 

Phobias. Often a fear comes to be chronic, or morbid, in 
which event it is known as a phobia. Usually the roots of 



THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF BEHAVIOR 133 

these morbid fears are to be found far back in the early 
years of one's hfe, and closely associated with unfortunate, 
or unhappy, or tragic experiences at that time encountered. 
For example, a morbid fear of fire (pyrophobia) persisting 
into and through adult life may have been caused originally 
by an experience with fire which can never afterward be 
effaced from the nervous system. Being in a burning build- 
ing, for instance, or being set on fire by lighted matches while 
playing with them, or hearing the screams of animals per- 
ishing in the flames, may become in the mind of the nerv- 
ously constituted child a rankling wound, as it were, which 
never heals and which remains always a source of much 
mental suffering. Other phobias besides the fire phobia 
include morbid fears of death, of dead bodies, of animals, 
even cats and dogs, of crowds or of solitude, of high places or 
enclosed places or open places, — all of which, together with 
scores of other fears, are to be met with in certain individ- 
uals. Dr. Hall has been able to tabulate several hundred 
distinct fears found in human beings in more or less morbid 
form. 

Adult fears. Fear in adults, and to some extent in chil- 
dren too, has both a negative and a positive aspect. In the 
case of abnormal fears such as the phobias, or of temporary 
normal fears, such as fear of snakes, mice, sudden noises, etc., 
fear may be said to be negative. The negative side of the 
simpler sorts of fear is after all, however, of very slight con- 
sequence to individuals. Ordinarily those common fears 
to which we are all subject on occasion arise suddenly when 
we encounter an impending and threatening stimulus, only 
to disappear as suddenly with the removal or explanation 
of the stimulus. The fear, for example, which nearly over- 
powers you in the depths of the night, when you are awak- 
ened from deep sleep by a mysterious noise in the house, 
is quite dispelled when you discover in fear and trembling 
that the source of the disturbance was merely a mouse in the 
wall or a stair creaking in the contracting cold. These 
negative, chance fears are peculiar to us all and are forgotten 



134 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

the next minute. There are, however, a great many aspects 
of our behavior in which the attendant and underlying fear 
response, though mild and passive often, is yet permanent 
and fixed throughout life, exerting always a salutary influ- 
ence over us. Such fear we may call positive in nature. 
Among fears of this sort may be mentioned the fear of dis- 
grace which keeps us honest and honorable; the fear of the 
law which keeps us obedient and law-abiding; the fear of 
failure which keeps us always employed to the uttermost in 
our vocations; and the fear of social disapproval or censure 
which keeps our social consciousness always keen and alert. 
In addition to these there are a considerable number of reli- 
gious fears and sex fears which play important and positive 
parts in the hves of all normal adult individuals. 

Anger. If you have ever observed very closely the behav- 
ior of two boys engaged in a controversy you have marked 
■ the flaming face and the blazing eye and the flushed cheek 
and the clenched fist and the quick breathing which were the 
physical expressions of their anger state. It may have oc- 
curred to you that here was an inexhaustible fountain of en- 
ergy which was running to waste with every blow delivered 
and with every breath drawn. In the infant the earliest 
symptoms of this emotion of anger usually appear with de- 
lay in the forthcoming of food or in the ministering to other 
physical wants besides hunger. In the very young child the 
outward manifestations of the anger state include the spas- 
modic crying, the convulsive openingand closing of the hands, 
the clutching of the clothing, the kicking of the feet, and the 

""u M^'u ^ . *^^ ^"""^y ^"""^ '^^^ *° ''^^- 1° ^ater infancy and in 
childhood the anger state is likely to'appear whenever an in- 
stinctive tendency has been repressed or thwarted, such for 
example as the removal of a toy or other desired object, or 
the inhibiting of privileges ordinarily enjoyed. The failure 
of any physical activity to find its desired or customary 
outlet tends to arouse the fighting instinct, and with it its 
natural correlate, the anger response. You have probably 
witnessed the operation of it in the behavior of the boy com- 



THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF BEHAVIOR 135 

pelled to remain at home and hoe potatoes the while his 
comrades hie them away to the trout stream or the woods; 
or in the girl whose motives or actions have been quite mis- 
judged by her fellows; or in children generally who are 
cheated, or laughed at, or made sport of, or wronged, or 
teased, or misjudged in any way. In the older child, how- 
ever, the expression ordinarily given to the anger state is 
more direct and purposeful than is true of the younger. The 
latter cries bitterly, strikes out blindly; the former restrains 
his tears and strikes more advisedly. He deems it cowardly 
to show signs of weeping; the manly thing is to strike and 
strike true. In the case of the girls it is similarly necessary 
to repress the tears, but instead of resorting so invariably 
to fisticuffs they more usually seek relief and satisfaction 
from their pent-up emotions by uttering bitter words, or by 
"cutting" the offender, or by going out of their way to do 
unkind things. Often, it is true, the bitter words and un- 
kind acts are repented of immediately they have been said or 
done, it may be in sackcloth and ashes, and it is ordinarily 
true that children rarely let the sun go down on their wrath. 
Such is childish anger. 

/ In adults, the anger state seeks expression in a multitude 
of ways, even as it is called forth by a multitude of situations. 
If you will endeavor to introspect a bit you will doubtless 
be able to make a somewhat extended list of all the situa- 
tions which arouse anger within you. It may be the wit- 
nessing of some one beating a horse; or it may be the re- 
ceipt of injustice on your part; or it may be the discovery 
of deceit and trickery and cheating in any department of 
life; or it may be the slanderous word spoken of another, or 
the thoughtless opinion expressed unadvisedly; or it may be 
the witnessing of any of the multifarious and innumerable 
petty meannesses which we encounter from day to day in 
our association with neighbors, or clerks, or business men, or 
officials, or legislators, et al. In general, anything which is 
antagonistic to our sense of justice may become the stimulus 
to wrath and indignation. Constructively, such anger 



136 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

states as are called forth by noble aspirations are invaluable 
to the ultimate salvation of the world for justice and truth 
and fair play. Without such reservoirs of energy and such 
stimuli to righteous conquest and the conquest of righteous- 
ness society would lack one of its greatest driving forces, for it 
is one of nature's most happy provisions that the anger state 
may be sublimated above the gross physical combativeness 
and become the incentive in all of us for the overcoming 
of all injustice and the conquering of all social evil in a world 
wherein there is still ample place for such righteous endeavor. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Report upon any observations of fear response in children. 

2. Recall from your own childhood all situations or objects which in- 
spired fear within you. What is your present attitude toward these 
same stimuli? 

3. Do you know of any case of morbid fear, or phobia, in any of your 
acquaintances? If so, can you account for its origin? 

4. Make a list of all the stimuli which arouse in you the anger state. 

5. Report upon any observations which you may chance to be able to 
make of the operation of anger in children. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Is the motive of fear ordinarily a desirable one to which a teacher may 
appeal? How has the attitude of educators changed in this respect in 
recent years? 

2. In how far is it possible for the influence of the schoolroom to be 
exerted toward directing the fear and anger energies of children away 
from the more crassly physical and toward the higher social or moral 
or intellectual? 

3. Dr. Hall says: "We fear God better for having feared thunder." 
Can you justify this belief and its implications? 

4. Are schoolyard fights ever justifiable? If so, under what conditions.' 
Do they ever offer opportimity to the teacher for salutary instruction? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, chaps. 18 and 19. 

2. Hall, G. S. "A Synthetic, Genetic Study of Fear"; in American 
Journal of Psychology, vol. 25, pp. 149-200; 321-92. 

3. Hall, G. S. " h.^tudy ot Anger" -tm American Journal of Psychology, 
vol. 10, pp. 516-71. 

4. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original Nature 
of Man, pp. 57-68; 76-80. 



LESSON 21 
THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF BEHAVIOR {continued) 
3. Love and Sympathy 
What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Whether the children seem to be sympathetic and considerate 
in their attitude toward any deformed or defective child in the 
classroom. What part do age and previous training play in 
determining the behavior of children toward unfortunates? 

2. Whether the children are keen at appreciatmg a humorous 
situation which may chance to arise. 

3. Evidences of the aesthetic appreciation of older as compared 
with younger children. 

Love. You have without doubt chanced to witness the 
interesting spectacle of a watching face pressed closely 
against the pane, its eyes turned anxiously and expectantly 
up the street in the direction whence a mother should come. 
It was the face of a child overcast with impatience at the 
delay of the returning mother, and yet lighted up with love 
for the absent and tardy one. If you watched this little 
tragedy long enough you were probably rewarded in due time 
by beholding the mother coming hurriedly down the street, 
and by the instantaneous transformation which her coming 
wrought in the eager face. From being impatient and per- 
haps cross, it was miraculously cleared and the hght of a great 
joy suffused it. Tear traces were dashed away, and two flying 
ifeet and wide-spread arms sped down the walk to find solace 
and comfort in the arms that never failed. Such is the 
power of love. Other women might have passed and re- 
passed the window all the afternoon, and yet none could 
satisfy save the one. 

In its earliest manifestations, it is true, the germinating 
love response of the infant is largely overclouded by the 
purely physical needs of the body. A mamma is to make 



138 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

one comfortable,and that only. A mamma is the person who 
feeds one, lulls one to sleep, keeps one's clothing comforta- 
ble, gives one drink, etc. The baby's love for the mother is 
not dissociated from the general satisfaction which he experi- 
ences from her tender and dependable ministrations. He 
IS lonely when the mother is absent, impatient at her delay 
in hastening to relieve him, happy when she is present and 
looking fondly and compassionately down upon him. Noth- 
ing else matters to the very young child. But as he grows 
older and learns to run about by himself the close relation- 
ship between the mother's care and the mother's indispensa- 
bleness no longer exists; one is able to a considerable degree 
to <^are for one's self. But now dawns the love genesis in 
the child s heart. From being a slave to his physical wants, 
the mother now suddenly becomes an indispensable com- 
panion and lover, a source not only of solicitude and sym- 
pathy over one's childish troubles but a sharer of one's joys 
and confidences as well. It is this stage in the develop- 
ment of the love response which we had in mind above when 
we referred to the childish face pressed against the pane 

And yet how soon the stage comes during which even the 
mother no longer satisfies; happiness and sympathy are 
sought now in the bosom of the group or gang, and the 
advances and protestations of the mother may be apparently 
disliked and purposely avoided. This is especially likely 
to be true when such manifestations of affection are offered 
m the presence of one's boyish chums. Not that the love 
for the mother is any less; rather the world of experience is 
opening before the child so rapidly and dehciously that he is 

r^ i^\ i * ''"^''"^ "^^^"^ ^"^^ ^"«t^^^' and in the shuffle 
which he does endeavor to make the love for the mother as 

iZ^fCt T T' r."'' '' ^^'^y to sink temporarily 
nto the background. This stage does not, however, con 

the^or r^- fl ^Tr "' ^"'"^ ^" '^' ^a^J^- pa-ion for 
the mother love floods back into the life of the child of the 
world of experience, and once again the world for him turns 
concentric about the mother. Indeed, it did so turn al 



THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF BEHAVIOR 139 

the time, in spite of the boy's growing interest in others. 
Throughout his whole hfe this love and veneration for the 
mother remains one of the strongest emotions of his being, 
and one of the surest guides of his conduct in all situations. 
Recall, if you will, your own early attitude toward your 
mother; introspect into your present attitude; project your 
present attitude into the future, and then see if that love 
which you bear her or her memory must not inevitably be 
ever green and fragrant. 

Sympathy. Out of this early association with the mother 
grows the emotion of sympathy. Kirkpatrick calls the child 
the most sympathetic of all creatures, and offers as an 
explanation of this seeming paradox the fact that children 
are unable in their earliest years to differentiate between 
animate and inanimate objects, and consequently tend to 
interpret the whole of nature and the whole inanimate world 
as a part of themselves, hence to be sympathetically acted 
toward. You have certainly noted this strange attitude 
in children playing about the yard. A broken flower may 
become the stimulus which incites the four-year-old to pour 
out his sympathies upon its unhappy state and perhaps bind 
it up. In a similar way and from a like motive you will 
occasionally find children patting the floor or the walk as 
though it had been injured, and muttering words of pity at 
its state. Trees and stones share likewise in this animistic 
belief of young children, as do also sticks and toys and 
other small objects in the environment. This is surely a 
very charming cult in childhood, although its duration is all 
too brief. Soon the child learns to isolate his own body and 
feelings from the surrounding medium, and henceforth he 
is no longer an infant but a child. Individualism and self- 
ishness creep in as rapidly as the earlier animistic sympathy 
begins to wane. Is the animistic sympathy itself selfish in 
nature? 

And yet if you have ever observed boys engaged in such 
amusing and absorbing pastimes as pulhng out the wings 
from the bodies of flies, or robbing birds' nests, or killing 



140 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

squirrels, or tying cats' tails together, or enclosing their 
heads in paper bags, or intent upon some other form of juve- 
nile barbarism, you will perhaps be inchned to question the 
natural sympathy of children. How prevalent does cruelty 
appear to be among young children! You have seen them 
bantering a feeble-minded child, and plaguing and teasing 
younger children, and calling their mates by nicknames which 
are altogether too suggestive and which may even make the 
appellants cringe under them, and breaking or stealing or 
hiding toys of others, and in other ways behaving more like 
cruel savages than sympathetic humans. Values appear to 
be in terms of what enjoyment or satisfaction or privilege 
one can get out of others, rather than what degree of help- 
fulness one can impart to the lives of those about him. 

All this is true. Older children are cruel, and selfish, and 
indifferent, and thoughtless, and hard. But the explanation 
lies not in any innate tendency toward cruelty. The boy 
does not pull out the wings of the fly for the purpose of 
making the fly suffer. He is actuated by another motive, 
namely: the desire to see what the fly will be able to do 
under such limitations. Curiosity prompts his act. Nor 
does the boy rob a bird's nest just to behold the anguish of 
the mother and the father birds; nor push the cat's head into 
a paper bag for the purpose of gloating over the animal's 
suffering. The explanation of his seeming brutality lies 
rather in his curiosity and his delight at beholding well- 
known animals do unaccustomed things. The whole ani- 
mate world, from the lowliest fly to the hunchback or the 
idiot, is for him a sort of complex jumping-jack, as it were, 
which he delights in manipulating at pleasure. Once, how- . 
ever, his experience has been broad enough to enable him to 
appreciate the feelings of his victims, or once his imagination 
has been sufficiently appealed to to arouse his dormant sym- 
pathies for them, then the cruelty appears less and less and 
thoughtfulness takes its place. During the early years of 
life his sympathies are very obviously limited because of the 
lack of these two vital forces in his conduct — experience 



THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF BEHAVIOR 141 

and imaginativeness. The former is to be acquired only 
with time; the latter in consequence of wise mstruction on 
the part of his elders. Lacking these two thmgs the child 
Remains an incorrigible savage in so far as his attitude to- 
ward other animate creatures of lesser stature are concerned. 
Now you can understand why it is that children are unable 
to appreciate death or sorrow or misfortune of adults: they 
have neither the experience nor the imagination to make it 
possible for them to put themselves in the places ot the be- 
reaved or the injured or the wronged. Sympathy is thus an 
emotion dependent upon time and relative maturity. 

Two other lesser emotions: the aesthetic and the humor- 
ous It is said of the Swiss mothers that shortly after the 
birth of their babes they hang a variegated cloth over the 
foot of the cradle in order that the wandering eyes of the in- 
fant may be attracted to the bright object. Pesta ozzi tells 
us that the child lies for hours at a time in delighted con- 
templation of the cloth blowing in the breeze. You have 
frequently remarked the interest in bright colors which most 
children manifest; even their toys are bright m the reds and 
purples and greens. Pictures delight their eyes and compel 
their imagination. Not the pictures of beautiful landscapes 
and temples and saints, but rather pictures of dogs and cats 
and animals in general and children hke themselves - these 
are the favorites. Real critical appreciation of art comes 
long years after. If you will study the drawings made 
spontaneously by young children you will find that their 
chief interests lie in trains and boats and people and animals 
with which and whom they are familiar and at home In 
the realm of music, too, the aesthetic appreciations of chil- 
dren are far from those of connoisseurs. The discords pro- 
duced from a long-suffering piano, or drawn from a non- 
descript harmonica, or a Jew's-harp, or even from an in- 
verted dishpan are infinitely more satisfying to them than 
the performance of a virtuoso. Their oral attempts, too, 
leave much to be desired in their voices and appreciations 
before they can become true artists. In hke manner the 



142 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

stories which they revel in are not those built skillfully and 
logically about a noble theme, as is the case of real art, but 
rather they are often the most illogical, and the least skillful, 
and the farthest removed from artistic in their execution. 

And yet some day out of all these barbarities of draw- 
ing and these discordances of music and these grossnesses of 
judgment will develop the aesthetic emotions of the next 
generation. Gradually the eye will be trained to judge and 
the ear to interpret and the hand to fashion and the senses V 
to discriminate. 

Of the humorous emotions we need pause to say but httle 
It IS so obvious to all of us that childhood is the age par 
excellence of humor and laughter that the fact requires no 
discussion. Wild, uncontrollable, and boisterous, the hu- ' 
morous side of child behavior sweeps us all along with its I 
very contagiousness until we are ourselves young again 
And even the sage and the philosopher are constrained to 
play peek-a-boo" with the httle child. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Observe an infant for several minutes while the mother is engaged 
toTreZ^T- ^°^'°"^^^-*-y-^dence of the genesis of S; 

2. Report upon any cases of cruelty either to other children or to birds j] 

or anmaaJs which you find boys engaging in. Can you determine the 
motives behmd the response? i-cimme me ^ 

3. Make a collection of the spontaneous drawings of a five-vear-old Hnr 
.ng an afternoon. It .^11 be necessary of coufse to seeTo it^h^t petu 
and paper are among the available articles near him ''^^'P^"^*^ , 

4. Report upon any instances of the humor response in children which \ 
may come under your notice. «-""uren wnicn ) 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. In how far does hero-worship in boys and cirls devplnn n„t ^e „ 
theUc understanding of the life an'd deedfof tteifC f "if^^^^ 
chJd at some t,me ot other likely to be a hero worshiper? Shlf w 
.tbeafunetionotthesehooltocneouragesuehXAi^r *''°°''' 

2. What is the value ot the somewhat reemV i„, I, .■ f 
of bird walks, nature readers, 1 IX U^lrZl^^'T""''^ 
fon with the work of the s^Ws of bird cS a„taal7ro3,^ 



THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF BEHAVIOR 143 

leagues and other agencies that tend to arouse children's interest in 
animals? Some of the more progressive schools often have small 
animals in captivity in the schoolroom for considerable periods for 
observation purposes. Has this any advantages or disadvantages? 
Dr. Hall has said that a series of small but entertainingly written and 
well illustrated books, each one dealing with the life and ways of some 
interesting animal, would be of very considerable value in every school- 
room. In what ways do you think this would be advantageous? 

3. What subjects of study, besides nature, are specially fraught with 
possibilities in the teaching of human sympathy to boys and girls, and 
particularly to the former? Should you say that sympathy is some- 
thing that may be taught directly, like multiplication, or indirectly, 
like truthfulness? 

4. Is the period of childhood, previous, say, to the fourteenth or fifteenth 
years, a time for emphasizing the technique or the appreciation of 
art? Why? 

5. Is there any lasting, though indirect, influence exerted upon the aes- 
thetic side of children's natures by the interior decorations of school- 
rooms and the arrangement and care of exteriors? Explain. 

SELECTED REFERENCE 

1. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 1, The Original Nature 
of Man, pp. 102-06. 




LESSON 22 

HEREDITY 
I. General Lesson 
The problem stated. We turn now from a consideration 
of the mstmctive endowments of the race to a discussion of 
the general subject of heredity. In a sense all of the instincts 
and their accompanying emotions are a heritage from the 
past Ufe of the race. They are, however, the echoes of a 
far distant past, so far indeed that the responses which they 
engender in the individual are sunk in the experiences of the 
endless number of individuals which have preceded him 
They are stamped indehbly upon the nervous system be- 
cause natural selection has operated in past ages to preserve 
such individuals as possessed them. In the case of heredity 
however, we are dealing with a more specific and less remote 
endowment. Heredity in the strict sense concerns itself 
primarily with the influence of family, sex or race Its 
problems include the influence exerted by parents and grand- 
parents upon the present individual; they include the 
probabilities of inheriting certain given physical or mental 
qualities from near ancestry; they include the relative weio-ht 
of nature and nurture, or heredity and environment in the 
development of the individual; they include the influence 
exerted over one by sex or race. They involve questions of 
training, education, marriage, and every other social rela- 
tionship. If we could determine all the forces of heredity 
and predict their appearance and strength in every child a 
large part of our educational process would be simplified 
and we should be working far more intelligently and to wiser 
purpose than we are at present able to do. Unfortunately 
however, our knowledge of this important side of life which 
is born in people is not so dependable as we might wish 
Commonly observed facts of heredity. Still there are 



HEREDITY 145 

certain facts about inheritance of traits and capacities 
which are generally accepted by all of us, for the very satis- 
fying reason that we have observed them ourselves to be 
true. You are familiar with the old saying, for example, 
that a child whose characteristics or abilities are hke his 
father's is " a chip off the old block." You have also heard 
such expressions as "hke father, hke son"; "it runs in the 
family"; the child is "the very image of his mother"; etc., 
and have experienced the truth in a general way of such 
popular axioms. Often you have noted the similarity of the 
features of a child with those of one of his parents. You 
have been struck, too, with the color of eyes and the shape of 
nose, or the color and texture of hair, or the general stature of 
children in whose parents the same traits were observable. 
It is probable also that you know of more than one family, 
possibly you yourself belong to such, in which the boast is 
commonly made that everybody in it has always lived to a 
good old age, and the ninety years of the maternal grand- 
father or the ninety-five of the paternal grandmother, or the 
venerable hundred of a famed great-grandparent are com- 
monly cited in defense of the claim. Left-handedness ap- 
pears to be another characteristic which recurs in families, 
although it is not improbable that early imitation of the left- 
handed mother may be a factor in determining the handed- 
ness of the child. It is likely, however, that the recurrence 
is dependent upon certain modifications in the nerve struc- 
tures which cause left-handedness to be really inherited in 
the family sense, in contradistinction to the usual racial 
heredity of right-handedness. It is a matter of common 
observation also that the children of one or both deaf parents 
are frequently, though not always, deaf; and that often the 
descendants of parents who have ocular irregularities or 
defects are similarly handicapped. 

When we come to an analysis of mental and moral char- 
acteristics, however, we are less sure of our ground. True, 
you have commonly observed that certain mental endow- 
ments, such as moodiness, and quick temper, and sluggish- 



146 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORI\L\L SCHOOLS 

ness of thinking, and will-power, and industriousness, and 
interests, and their opposites, appear to be handed down 
from parent to child much as physical stature and color of 
eyes are inherited. In hke manner, artistic abilities are 
frequently observed to be transmitted through several gen- 
erations. In general, parents who are musical, or artistic 
or mathematically minded, or skilled in mechanics, are 
hkely to perpetuate like skills or capacities in their children, 
— always with generous exceptions. In general, too, per- 
sons of unimpeachable moral character ordinarily have much 
to thank their parentage for, although it is obvious that 
training and nurture play such large parts here that it is 
impossible to ascribe to heredity any constant and invariable 
responsibility in the matter. 

Perhaps if we look at mental and moral endowments from 
the negative side it will help us to form a more general 
estimate of the part played by heredity. If you chance to 
know a family in which the parents are idle and shiftless and 
perhaps of questionable character, it is probable that the 
children in that family tend more or less exactly to be coun- 
terparts of their parents. Again, if you are acquainted with 
a family of weak-minded people who manage to drift along 
with the world without ever getting into any great difficulties 
with the law, and without ever being an appreciable influ- 
ence for anything positive in the community, it is more than 
likely that the children in that home are indeed and in truth 
"chips off the old blocks." Or again, if you chance to know 
of a family of people who are commonly reputed in the com- 
munity to be feeble-minded, invariably many of the children 
in that family will be likewise idiotic. Thus, when we look 
at the extremes of human beings we can see the high spots in 
heredity, which are no longer so traceable when we turn 
to study the great mass of normal, everyday human beings 
who differ after all less than they resemble one another and 
in whom the force of heredity can only with the greatest 
difficulty be differentiated from the forces of environment. 
Even in the case of the idle and shiftless family, cited above. 



HEREDITY 147 

one could not say advisedly, without careful study of the 
case, in how far the shif tlessness observable in the children is 
inherited from the father and mother, and in how far it is the 
result of their being brought up in an environment wherein 
they have never been taught to assert themselves aggres- 
sively and to take a positive outlook upon life and its possi- 
bilities. It is only in the case of the extreme variants from 
the normal, i.e., the positively idiotic or imbecilic, that we 
can say with greater assurance: thus much is due to heredity, 
and thus much to environment. 

Are diseases inherited? You doubtless know of cases 
where the children of a tuberculous mother or father " went 
into consumption," as the saying goes. Or you have heard 
the neighbors say: "Tuberculosis runs in the family; John 
is doomed," or make predictions to that effect. As a matter 
of fact the heritability of specific disease is almost wholly 
denied in the light of modern scientific medicine. The ex- 
planation of the instance which is perhaps even now crowd- 
ing into your mind wherein a child of tubercular parentage 
is already in the grip of the Great White Plague lies rather 
in the close association of that child with his infected par- 
ent than in any inheritance of disease from him. Children 
are very susceptible to disease, and their resistance power 
is extremely low in the early years of life. Let a child be 
associated with a tuberculous mother or father in the close- 
ness of filial association during the first years of its life, and 
it is almost certain to acquire or take the disease from the 
parent, or from any other member of the family who 
chances to be infected with it. Barring a few eye infec- 
tions and ocular weaknesses and certain nervous predis- 
positions, which are not, properly speaking, diseases at all, 
it is probable that disease is rarely if ever transmitted 
through the germ plasm from parent to child. This does 
not, of course, contradict the often observed fact that 
children whose parents suffer chronically from tuberculosis 
or other disease are more likely to fall themselves victim 
to that disease than are children in whose heredity there is 



148 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

no such tendency. This is due to the constitutional weak- 
ness which predisposes the infant to tendencies to the spe- 
cific disease, and reduces appreciably in it the naturally 
low resistance power common to all children. Thus, about 
all we can say in defense of the popular superstition that 
disease runs in families is that the tendency to take a family 
disease is heightened by the weakly constitution of a child 
of sickly parents. Beyond this there is little truth in the 
contention, and absolutely none in the superstition that 
specific disease is inherited. The germ plasm is continu- 
ous and immortal, and absolutely isolated from any possi- 
bility of infection directly with zymotic disease. 

All this would seem to imply that if we can properly safe- 
guard the weakly child from a disease environment we can 
be more sure of saving him from the clutches of the beset- 
ting malady of his father or his mother. This is eminently 
true, and there are many social agencies nowadays which 
take note of this fact and devote all their energies in an 
endeavor to improve the health environment of weakly 
and sickly children, often to the extent of removing such 
children from their homes and placing them in more salu- 
tary surroundings for a season. 

In the case of nervous disorders, as we suggested above, 
the importance of heredity cannot be overestimated. From 
parentage in which there have been taints of insanity or 
nervous instability or neurotic tendencies are almost cer- 
tain to issue children who tend toward those peculiarities. 
Thus, the children df parents who are nervously unstable, 
or who are mentally disordered, such for example as being 
subject to neurasthenia or to insanity, will bear in their own 
nervous systems the weaknesses of their parents. These 
inborn weaknesses may or may not become pronounced 
during the hfetime of the individual. In case of a thor- 
oughly wholesome environment and hygienic living, with 
tempered work and relaxation, persons of neurotic heritage 
may often continue tolerably normal throughout hfe; but 
let the environment be one of worry and dissipation or of 



HEREDITY 149 

untempered toil or of unwholesome surroundings, and the 
lurking disorder is likely to become pronounced at any 
time. Generations of well-ordered living in a family line 
thus subject to nervous disorders are required before such 
taints are obliterated and the original stability of the nerv- 
ous system restored. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Distinguish carefully between heredity and environment. 

2. Can you identify any of your own physical characteristics or moral 
and mental capacities with those of either parent, or any of your grand- 
parents? 

3. Can you illustrate this lesson by describing to the class the peculiari- 
ties of any family in your own neighborhood wherein the influences of 
heredity are to be seen in any particularly marked way? 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Is there any possible danger in interfering with the normal left-handed- 
ness of a child? 

2. Since the heredity of children is so varied, what is to be said in favor 
of individual as opposed to group instruction? What are the practical 
difficulties in the way of any wide introduction of the former into our 
schools? 

3. What basis does vocational or prevocational guidance have in human 
heredity? 

4. What efforts are now being made by school administrators to provide 
for more homogeneous groupings of children in the schoolroom accord- 
ing to their natural abilities? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Castle, W. E. Heredity, chap. 1. 

2. Davenport, C. B. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, chap. 3. 

3. Jewett, F. G. The Next Generation, chaps. 15 and 16. 

4. Popenoe, P., and Johnson, R. H. Applied Evgenics, chap. 2. 
6. Waddle, C. W. Introduction to Child Psychology, chap. 3. 



^ 



LESSON 23 

HEREDITY {continued) 
2. Three Famous Laws of Heredity 

In no possible field of investigation is there so much of 
fascination as in the field of heredity, either human, an- 
imal, or plant. You are doubtless familiar with some of 
the interesting results which have been obtained within 
recent years in the production of new and improved breeds 
of animals and plants. Finer, more luscious fruits and 
stronger, fitter animals have been evolved by scientific 
breeding and grafting on the part of men devoted to ex- 
perimentations in heredity. Even in ancient times, the 
Romans and the Egyptians and other early peoples knew 
certain fundamental facts concerning the science of breed- 
ing, although their knowledge was largely hit-or-miss and 
was never built up into a body of dependable practice. It 
remained for the scientific movement of the last century 
to awaken men to the limitless possibilities of heredity, and 
to incite them to set to work to amass through experimen- 
tation a body of exact knowledge of hereditary principles. 
It must be confessed, however, that thus far only a begin- 
ning has been made in this interesting undertaking, al- 
though thousands of workers all over the world have been 
and are engaged in it. The problems of heredity are so 
elusive and so difiicult to approach that it requires years of 
careful experimenting and study for the establishment of 
dependable principles. The result is that while we possess 
at the present time a considerable number of interesting 
theories and principles of heredity, we are not able to say 
that the greater part of them are universal and invariable. 
In fact, there appear to be exceptions to all of them, either 
because the theories themselves are inexact, or because 
it has been found impossible to discover perfectly pure, un- 



HEREDITY 151 

mixed individuals upon which to base them. This is es- 
pecially true in experimenting upon human heredity. There 
are, however, three laws which seem to be constant and 
tolerably dependable; at least they are the only three that 
head the list of all proposed principles which are able to 
sustain examination and application in the greatest number 
of instances. Let us pause to consider each of these theories. 

Mendel's law. Among the great number of individuals 
who have been attracted by the fascination of hereditary 
principles to make careful and scientific study of them, 
Gregor Johann Mendel deserves first place after Darwin 
himself. Mendel was an Austrian monk living in the 
second half of the nineteenth century, and a teacher of the 
physical and natural sciences in a monastic school at Briinn. 
In the garden connected with his monastery he carried out 
the experiments which have since made his name famous, 
and been embodied in what is known as MendeVs Law of 
Heredity. For eight years he planted successions of simple 
garden-peas in a little corner of his garden, keeping careful 
records of all experiments and noting carefully every factor 
of significance entering into them. 

In his earlier experiments he used tall and dwarf peas of 
pure strains, crossing them artificially and noting the re- 
sults in several subsequent generations. In the first gen- 
eration he found that all the offspring were of the tall va- 
riety, like the first parent; none were dwarf. He therefore 
came to the conclusion, checked up by many other ex- 
periments, that one of the parents, the tall pea, contained 
some element within it which might be said to be dominant 
over corresponding elements in the dwarf pea, resulting in 
imparting its quality of tallness to the progeny. But when 
he crossed these offsprings of the tall and dwarf peas he made 
the discovery that 277 dwarfs were produced, while 787 
were of the tall variety. Or, in other words, Mendel found 
that the dominant element reappeared in the second gen- 
eration in approximately the ratio of three to one, while the 
dwarf element which had not appeared at all in the first 



152 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 




1 



Fig. 4. MENDEL'S LAW 

T= peas of a tall variety ; D = peas of a dwarf variety. Tall peas are seen to 
be dominant over dwarf. A study of the diagram will indicate the results of 
crossing the two sorts. (Sketch by the author.) 

generation now made its appearance in the ratio of approx- 
imately one to three. Hence Mendel concluded that in 
addition to the dominant element there must also be a 



HEREDITY 153 

recessive element present in a latent form which tended to 
come into dominance in approximately one out of three 
of the progeny in the second generation. Further experi- 
mentation with smooth and wrinkled peas, and with yellow 
and green peas, and with colored and white peas, showed the 
same phenomenon; i.e., that in the first generation of cross- 
ing only the one element reappeared in the offspring. Thus, 
smooth peas were found to be dominant over wrinkled, yel- 
low over green, and colored over white, etc. In the second 
generation, too, he found wrinkled peas appearing among 
the smooth in the ratio of one to three, and in like manner 
green among the yellow and white among the colored, and 
always in the same approximate one-to-three ratio. 

Carrying on his experiments with these peas of the second 
generation, one out of four being dwarf or wrinkled or 
green or white, depending upon the sort of peas originally 
selected as parents, Mendel found that in the case of those 
in which the recessive element became dominant in the 
second generation all subsequent descendants bred pure; 
i.e., that from the dwarf or wrinkled or green or white peas 
crossed with others of the same parentage came only 
dwarfed or wrinkled or green or white offspring. On the 
other hand, from the three other sorts of peas which re- 
mained smooth or yellow or colored in the second genera- 
tion, he found in the third generation that one remained 
pure, always thereafter breeding true, while the remaining 
two continued "hybrid," giving in subsequent generations 
the ratio of three dominant to one recessive. 

Mendel formulated his discoveries into what has since 
become known as MendeVs Law. It may be stated thus: 
hereditary characters are ordinarily independent elements 
which — after the first generation, in which one element 
is dominant over the other — tend to reappear in the ratio 
of three dominant to one recessive in the second generation, 
the recessive breeding thereafter true, but the dominants 
repeating the history of the first generation in two cases 
and becoming pure recessive thereafter in the third case. 



154 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

It is evident to you that, if the same relationship of domi- 
nant and recessive characters obtains for human beings 
as obtains for garden peas, the significance of the MendeUan 
Law is very great indeed in the heritage of children. De- 
sirable dominant characters are to be preserved so far as 
possible, while undesirable recessive characters are to be 
concealed; or, on the other hand, undesirable dominant 
characters are to be eliminated and desirable recessives 
preserved. Obviously the only way in which to accom- 
plish this is to prevent admixture of strains whose offspring 
will tend to bring into prominence the undesirable char- 
acter. Already we have laws in a great many States which 
forbid marriages among cousins, in order to offset any 
likelihood of undesirable characters meeting their corre- 
spondents in offspring of the same original strain. Suppose, 
for example, that a normal woman of a strain in which there 
is imbecility marries a man who is likewise normal, but 
coming from the same strain. The result in the children 
would be probably weak-mindedness and perhaps positive 
imbecility. The same might be expected to hold true of 
parents in whose common ancestry were tendencies toward 
insanity or neurosis or constitutional weakness or epilepsy. 

But not only is there danger in consanguineous marriages 
that an undesirable character will be intensified in the off- 
spring: a similar danger exists in marriages of people who 
are quite unrelated but in whose ancestral stocks there ex- 
ists weaknesses of the kind mentioned. Hence the problem 
of being well-born is a tremendous one which becomes the 
more complex the further we inquire into it. It is certainly 
a fortunate tendency in normal human beings that only 
normal marry normal; it is hkewise true, however, that 
ordinarily only feeble-minded marry feeble-minded. There 
are dangers in both tendencies : in the first because of possi- 
ble mutual weaknesses which are recessive and which tend 
by union to be intensified; and in the second because, as 
Walter remarks, "Nothing plus nothing equals nothing: 
from feeble-minded parentage only feeble-minded progeny 



I 



HEREDITY 155 

can issue." The latter condition of marrying furnishes the 
most alarming possibilities in heredity, both because of the 
persistence of feeble-minded lines and because the progeny 
of the weak-minded is usually very prolific. 

Every child born into the world deserves to be well-born 
in order to stand a fair chance in the struggle for survival 
and advancement. Not all children, however, are well- 
born. Very likely among your own range of acquaintance 
there are several families in which you would hesitate to say 
that the children were well-born. You, of course, are aware 
of the immense expenditure which your State is obliged 
to make every year in order to support and maintain and 
train as far as possible those of its citizens who are unable 
through unfortunate heritage to maintain themselves. You 
are cognizant, also, of the cost in money and the expendi- 
ture of effort and time required in the caring for those in 
the public schools who (very often) through lack of being 
well-born are unable to keep pace with their fellows, and 
have to be instructed in special classes or else removed en- 
tirely from the public schools and placed in institutions. 
On the grounds of expenditure alone, without taking into 
account the personal and sentimental aspects of subnor- 
mality among children, society would be well repaid if every 
child could be well-born. Mendel's principle of the domi- 
nant and recessive characters may come in time to be a 
factor of significance in making it possible for all children 
to be thus "created equal." The fact remains, however, 
that such human institutions as marriage are very delicate 
problems to discuss and still more delicate to modify or 
attempt to control. 

It should be noted in passing that wherever Mendel's 
Law has seemed to apply to the inheritance of human char- 
acteristics, accordijig to the best attested reports, those 
characteristics have without exception been abnormalities 
rather than normalities. Thus, white blaze in the hair, 
short-fingeredness (brachydactylity), etc., seem to follow 
the Mendelian hypothesis. 



156 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

Galton's Laws. Among all the inquirers into the nature 
of human heredity none has been more interested and in- 
teresting than Sir Francis Galton, himself a cousin to 
Charles Darwin. The methods which Galton employed 
are, however, open to some criticism because they were 
based rather upon statistical information than upon actual 
experimentation and study of definite pedigrees. Since 
Galton's time the statistical method has, however, become 
in the hands of the eugenists a very valuable instrument in 
the investigation of hereditary principles. Galton's first 
law, thus established, he termed the Law of ancestral in- 
heritance. According to this principle, which he believed 
to be justified by his observations and inquiries, the con- 
tribution of the immediate ancestors to the offspring ex- 
ceeds that of any other ancestors and equals that of all the 
others. That is, every child inherits approximately one 
half of his characteristics from his two parents, one fourth 
from his four grandparents, one eighth from his eight great- 
grandparents, one sixteenth from his great-great-grand- 
parents, and so on back indefinitely in geometric ratio. 
This is certainly a very satisfying and simple explanation 
of all the intricacies of heredity, but unfortunately it fails 
utterly to explain marked variations from the near an- 
cestors in children and likewise fails to account for occa- 
sional almost perfect duplicates of parent or grandparent 
and child or grandchild. 

Another law proposed by Galton, the Laiv of filial re- 
gression, while it is commonly observed to be true in large 
numbers of cases, is open to somewhat the same criticisms 
as his other law. According to his second principle, Galton 
concludes that all children tend to approach a type physi- 
cally and probably mentally. That is, parents of average 
height will produce children of average height; children of 
very tall parents, on the one hand, tend to be taller than 
the average, but not so tall as their parents; while children 
of very short parents tend to be shorter than the average, 
but not so short as the parents. This has been nature's 



HEREDITY 



157 



way of maintaining the height of the race through countless 
generations at about the same average. On the mental 
side the law may be illustrated thus: children/Of very tal- 
ented parents tend to be more talented than the average but 
not so talented as their parents; while children of sluggish 



Tall — 



Average" 
Short — 



Fami ly 



N^"*. 



> - ^^ — 



X», 



ni iy B 



Fig. 5. FILIAL REGRESSION 

The parents of Family A, being taller than the average, will, according to Galton, 
have children who will be shorter than they, but taller than the average. The 
parents of Family B, on the other hand, being shorter than the average, will 
have children taller than they, but not so tall as the average. 



parents tend to be less sluggish than their parents but more 
sluggish than the average. Subsequent investigations by 
Karl Pearson and the school of biometricians have in the 
main borne out Galton's results. 

Both of Galton's laws are very interesting and suggestive, 
but it is perfectly obvious that often nature sets aside both 
of them altogether and creates an individual whose char- 
acteristics can be accounted for neither by the one law nor 
by the other. They appear to be valid only when applied 
to great numbers of individuals, and are apt to be totally 



158 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NOR^IAL SCHOOLS 



■ 



invalidated when applied to a single family. The intrica- 
cies of human heredity are so complex and the variations 
in parents and ancestral hnes and strains so labyrinthine 
that in all probability we have scarcely yet scratched the 
surface in searching after nature's ultimate and invariable 
laws. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Study your own characteristics with a view to determinuig from which 
of your parents you inherit the more, if either. Can you determine 
the extent of your heritage of characteristics from a grandparent? 

2. What is meant by the term "eugenics"? How does it diflFer from 
"euthenics"? 

3. Be prepared to report in class upon some interesting experiment in 
animal heredity to be found in the following list of selected references. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Castle, W. E. Heredity, chap. 3. 

2. Jewett, F. G. The Next Generation, chap. 5. 

3. Popenoe, P., and Johnson, R. H. Applied Eugenics, chap. 5. 

4. Walter, H. E. Genetics, chap. 7. 



LESSON 24 

HEREDITY (continued) 
3. Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics 

The problem stated. One of the most interesting ques- 
tions arising out of a study of heredity is the question as to 
whether or not acquired characteristics are heritable. Will 
the children of a man who has made the most of all his op- 
portunities with the result that he stands among the leaders 
of his profession or vocation be for that reason any better 
born than had the same father been less successful? Or, 
to make the case still more concrete, will a son born to a 
father who has, by dint of persistent application, made him- 
self famous in the world of art be better endowed at birth 
than another son of the same father born ten years before, 
at a time when he was still struggling in art as a promising 
young amateur? Or again, will a daughter born of a young 
mother who is interested in story writing, but whose manu- 
scripts thus far have always been returned "with thanks," 
be less capable of a literary career than another daughter 
born several years later after the mother has made her 
name and is recognized as a talented writer? In other 
words, the question of acquired characteristics or of non- 
acquired ones concerns itself with whether or not varia- 
tions which are not inborn, but which are acquired during 
the lifetime of an individual by experience or practice or 
use — or disuse or mutilation — can be transmitted by 
that individual to his children. It is evident that if the 
tendency toward such transmission can be demonstrated 
our problem of teaching children will be immensely simpli- 
fied, for we shall know exactly what are the possibilities in 
every child in our schoolroom and can shape our instruction 
and training accordingly. 

Imagine if you can the possibilities of teaching children 




160 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

whose innate abilities or disabilities are known exactly. 
By stressing individual instruction and dealing with each 
child according to his inner capacities and abilities we might 
surely within a very few years raise up a cumulative crop 
of geniuses such as the world has never known! And fancy, 
too, how the descendants of our geniuses in the next gen- 
eration would overtop the attainments of their mediocre 
fathers! Unfortunately, however, the evidence supporting 
the heritability of acquired characteristics is almost wholly 
negative, and it is extremely likely that we shall have to 
be content to continue our training of children for a good 
many generations yet to come along somewhat the same 
fashion as at present. 

Lamarck's theory. In the meantime this question as to 
the heritability or the non-heritability of acquired char- 
acters is agitating a great number of students and inves- 
tigators in heredity. At the present time the thoughtful 
and dependable opinion of investigators is divided very 
strongly on the question, with the weight of established 
evidence on the side of the opposition; i.e., of those who 
hold that such characters are not inherited. The support- 
ers of the affirmative camp; that is, of those who admit the 
heritability of such characters, are known as the Neo- 
Lamarckians, after the chief proponent of the theory. Ac- 
cording to Lamarck, the whole means of evolution of a 
species are due to the inheritance through desire or need, 
use or disuse, or change in living conditions, of acquired 
responses. Gradually such accretions of the experiences 
of numberless generations must result in the slow evolution 
of the species concerned. 

Weissmann's theory. The name which is inseparably 
linked with the opponents of Lamarckianism is that of 
Weissmann who, with his followers, deny the possibility 
of the inheritance of acquired characteristics and maintain 
that there is a complete separation between the germ cells 
and the body cells. Hence, while external influences may 
affect the body profoundly, such influences are not trans- 



HEREDITY 161 

mitted through the germ cells to the next generation. It 
follows from this that only such influences as are able to 
modify the germ cells can have any effect upon progeny. 
As to what such possible influences over the germ cells are, 
we are still relatively ignorant. But your own observa- 
tion has certainly been extensive enough to assure you of 
the truth of the contention of Weissmann that acquired 
bodily characteristics cannot be inherited. For example, 
the children of parents who have acquired deformities such 
as the loss of a hand or a limb are not for that reason de- 
formed. Nor are the descendants of parents who acquire 
round-shoulderedness or bow-leggedness or frightful scars 
effected by these characteristics in their parents. As 
Conklin very aptly illustrates it: "Wooden legs do not run 
in families, but wooden heads do." The former are ac- 
quired, while the latter are innate. Suppose, for instance, 
that the future sons and daughters of the thousands and 
thousands of soldiers who have lost arms or legs or other 
parts of their bodies were doomed to inherit those identical 
features in coming ages. What a spectacle of future un- 
happiness we should be forced to contemplate! 

A very interesting series of experiments have been con- 
ducted by Weissmann in demonstration of his disbelief in 
the theory of the Lamarckians. For twenty generations in 
succession he cut off the tails of a large number of mice 
without ever being able to produce in their descendants 
tailless mice. In more recent years other interesting ex- 
periments have been performed on rabbits, Belgian hares, 
guinea pigs, etc., always with the same apparent substan- 
tiation of Weissmann's position. 

It is, however, a very difficult matter to experiment upon 
the transmission of mental as opposed to physical characters, 
and as yet little has been done in this field. About all that 
can be said, pending the results of further investigations 
in heredity, is that acquired mental characters are probably 
no more transmitted to subsequent generations than are 
acquired physical ones. 



162 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS ■ 

Frances Gulick Jewett, in her interesting little book The 
Nexl Generation, reports the following pointed conversation 
which she had with a neighbor : 

A young mother expressed the greatest disappointment over the 
fact that her daughter was not musical. 

"I simply cannot understand it," she exclaimed. "Before the 
child was born I spent hours every day practicing the piano, be- 
cause I was determined to have at least one musical person in the 
family. Does n't science say that we can stamp our children this 
way or that before they are born? I have proved that we can't." 

"Has she no musical ability whatever.''" I asked. 

"None at all," was the answer; "neither have I; neither has her 
father. That's precisely why I practiced so. I was trying to help 
the family out. I wanted to put musical power into it." 

"And you failed?" I asked. 

"Absolutely," was the answer. 

"The trouble was with your own lack of information," I con- 
tinued. She looked surprised, but I gave her no time to speak. 
''The process of evolution proves that we stamp our children with 
what is within ourselves, not according to what we make ourselves 
do. The doing is n't going to stamp children before they are born; 
it is the being that does it. Is n't your daughter rather persis- 
tent?" 

"Lideed she is," said the woman, looking at me in astonishment. 
"She's the most persistent thing you ever saw. But what gave 
you the idea? You have n't even seen her." 

"No," I answered, "but from your story I see that you yourself 
are persistent, not musical. Where was her musical taste to come 
from if neither you nor her father had it? You must n't blame her. 
Laws of nature are responsible." 

It would be hard to find a more interesting and significant 
story than this. The same author calls attention also to 
the fact that for more than 300 years the people of China 
bound their infants' feet, but were never able to produce a 
generation of deformed feet in their daughters: each gen- 
eration had to be bound just as the preceding had been. 
So, she adds, a woman might crimp her hair from the cradle 
to the grave without giving birth to a child with curly hair. 
Alas for the parents who longingly covet for their own 



HEREDITY 163 

straight-haired daughters the curling locks of a neighbor's 
child! 

How, then, does evolution take place? How is it that a 
species ever undergoes transformation from age to age? 
Why do bodies grow larger or smaller, or senses sharper, or 
habits different, or instinctive tendencies varied, or color 
or form modified? How does it happen, for example, that 
from the original ancestor of the genus felis, or cat family, 
there have developed the modern cat and wild-cat and 
panther and leopard and tiger and all the other variants 
of an original common ancestor? One answer given to this 
perplexing question is to the effect that at certain times in 
the struggle for survival sports chanced to appear which dif- 
fered in some marked way from their parents. As to the 
exact cause underlying the appearance of the sport, science 
cannot yet inform us. We know, however, that such sports 
do come into being among a great number of species, that 
they have the capacity of handing down their peculiarity 
to their own descendants, and that in this way sudden and 
apparently unexplainable changes in structures appear and 
continue until natural selection either causes them to perish 
in the struggle for survival, or else selects them for further 
evolutionary progress because of the fitness of them to sur- 
vive. This theory of the sudden and unheralded appear- 
ance in a species of sports is called the mutation theory, or 
the theory of De Vries, after its discoverer, Hugo de Vries. 
The most interesting illustrations of mutations in human 
beings are to be found in the sudden appearance in the 
child of apparently normal parents of six fingers or toes, or 
two- jointed digits, which tend to reappear in other genera- 
tions until they are finally out-crossed by marriages with 
normals. 

It would seem, however, that the theory of De Vries, 
while credible as a possible explanation of occasional rather 
marked variations from the parents in the offspring, is not 
an altogether plausible explanation of those very slight 
variations which lie, according to Darwin, at the basis of 



164 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

development, as we have seen. Weissmann and his fol- 
lowers, the Neo-Darwinians, take for granted the gradual 
establishment of new characters through natural selection. 
"The progeny of a fluctuation (i.e., of slight variation as 
opposed to sudden mutation) will vary," says Walter, 
"around the old average of the parental generation, while 
the progeny of a mutation will vary around a new average 
set by the mutation itself." Weissmann, as we noted above, 
denies the heritability of acquired bodily characteristics, 
since their heritage would be assuming the principle that 
modification is able to modify also the germ plasm. The 
experiments on mice which he conducted, produced somatic 
(i.e., body) modifications in the parents, but no tailless de- 
scendants were thereby induced. For Weissmann, there 
are no "acquired characters" save those arising from such 
modifications as are able to affect the germ plasm itself. 
He postulates the "continuity of the germ plasm," by which 
he means that it is forever insulated from the somatic char- 
acters, and hence unresponsive to any influence which 
affects the latter merely. He accounts for variation, or 
progress, by the theory of "amphimixis," which asserts 
that one of the prime purposes of sexual reproduction is 
that the germ elements of two individuals may be com- 
mingled, thus making inevitable certain combinations of 
characters and perchance the production of quite new ones. 
Natural selection seizes upon any variation thus engen- 
dered and either makes possible its continuation or its 
discontinuance inevitable. 

Finally, it should be impressed upon us all that as yet 
there can be no finality of theory or truth in heredity. The 
weight of opinion is to-day unquestionably toward Weiss- 
mannism; to-morrow the experiments of scientists may 
cause the pendulum of conviction to swing back to the 
Lamarckians, although, as Conklin points out, "even the 
strongest defenders of the inheritance of acquired characters 
are constrained to admit that it occurs only sporadically 
and exceptionally." Only one thing is surely true: the mys- 



HEREDITY 165 

teries of heredity comprise a great, untrodden field wherein 
scarcely the surface has as yet been touched. For the 
student and for the teacher it is necessary to keep an open 
mind, and to await with interest the results of deeper delv- 
ing. It may be that many of nature's secrets can never 
be wrested from her, for she appears to delight to tantalize 
her explorers in apparently assuring them of one conclusion 
and in the next moment upsetting all their fine-spun theories 
by appearing to contradict herself. 

In the next chapter we shall dismiss our study of theories 
and turn our attention to a survey of some of the more in- 
teresting and significant studies which have been made in 
the field of human heredity, paying special attention only 
to such studies as are of significance to us as teachers of 
children. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Look up in some standard reference the theories of Lamarck and 
Weissmann. 

2. Can you offer any illustrations either of the truth or the untruth of 
the inheritance of acquired characters? 

3. Exactly what is meant by an acquired character? By an inborn 
character? (See reference 1.) 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. If the characters which parents acquired during their lifetime could 
be passed on to their children, might we not be justified in expecting 
babes to be possessed of complete intelligence at birth, with ability to 
talk, reason and cogitate like their parents? Is it not rather the case, 
however, that the intelligence and ability of babes register at zero, 
and that every individual born into the world must pass laboriously 
up the pathway of ex-perience and formal education before he can be 
said to be possessed of rational intelligence, regardless of the mental 
caliber of his parents? 

2. If the Lamarckian theory were true, might we not expect the crop 
of geniuses in each age to surpass that of the preceding until a race of 
supermen would ultimately and soon result? What would be the 
corresponding tendency in the crop of abnormals, criminals and non- 
descripts from age to age? Is not Dame Nature after all wise in pro- 



166 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

viding for the continuity of the germ plasm in relatively complete 
isolation from the chance influences of time? 

SELECTED REFERENCES " 

1. Conklin, E. G. Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men, 
chap. 4, sec. D. 

2. Jewett, F. G. The Next Generation, chap. 11. 

3. Walter, H. E. Genetics, chaps. 3, 4, and 5. 



LESSON 25 
HEREDITY (continued) 
4. Studies in Heredity 

A promising method of investigation. The direct study 
of problems in heredity is always promising because the 
world is full of people who so far diverge in their behaviof 
from that of normal individuals as to offer excellent oppor- 
tunity for the scientist to investigate the possible factors 
leading to such abnormality of conduct. Very likely you 
yourself know of at least one family in which exist such 
deviations from the normal as epilepsy, or idiocy, or in- 
sanity, on the one hand, or the tokens of genius and unusual 
talent on the other. Students of heredity long since were 
attracted to the study of persons or families of this nature, 
with the result that at the present time we possess a con- 
siderable number of illuminating inquiries which, while they 
do not always throw any particularly new light upon the 
mysteries of heredity, do however serve to demonstrate our 
previous suppositions in the more obvious aspects of human 
inheritance to be true. One of the most interesting of these 
studies of heredity is that made by Goddard, and published 
under the title of The Kallikak Family. 

The Kallikak family. Some years ago there appeared at 
the Vineland Training School in New Jersey, a school for 
the study and care of the feeble-minded, a girl who especially 
interested Dr. Goddard and his assistants because of the 
very obviousness of her subnormality and at the same time 
her apparent brightness. The fictitious name which the 
girl bears throughout the records is Deborah Kallikak. 
Inspired with a curiosity to trace the parentage and an- 
cestry of the girl as far back as possible, the workers at 
Vineland set on foot an exhaustive investigation into the 
mystery of Deborah's ancestry. Back through generations 



168 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

of ancestors the investigation led them, now becoming so 
obscm-e and micertain that they gave up for the time being 
in despair, now fresh facts coming to Ught to encourage 
them in their difficult undertaking. For you must appre- 
ciate that delving into genealogy becomes increasingly diffi- 
cult as the ancestors studied become more and more remote 
from the present. Sometimes students in heredity labor 
for months upon a certain line of people, only to find that 
there are hopeless breaks in the ancestral links which cannot 
possibly be unearthed; or again to discover that a certain 
supposed branch of the line upon which one has been work- 
ing for weeks is after all quite unconnected with the family 
imder consideration. And yet, in spite of all its intricacies 
and occasional bafflings such investigation cannot but be 
fascinating. And so Dr. Goddard's workers found it in 
their efforts to unravel the elusive threads of Deborah 
Kallikak's parentage and forbears. And "the surprise and 
horror of it all was that no matter where we traced them, 
whether in the prosperous rural district, in the city slums 
to which some had drifted, or to the more remote mountain 
regions, or whether it was a question of the second or the 
sixth generation, an appalling amount of defectiveness was 
everywhere found." 

At last, after many months of careful investigations, the 
ancestry of Deborah was charted, together with the records 
of several hundred descendants of the original Martin 
Kallikak, Sr. The following is, briefly, the story of De- 
borah's ancestry in direct line. Back at the time when the 
army of the Revolution was being formed, Martin Kallikak, 
Sr., then a young man under twenty-one years of age, 
joined one of the numerous military companies being made 
up in his neighborhood and, at one of the taverns frequented 
by the soldiers, he met a feeble-minded girl by whom he be- 
came the father of a feeble-minded son. The mother gave 
to this child the full name of its father, Martin Kallikak, Jr., 
and it was this same Martin, Jr., who became the great- 
great-grandfather of Deborah. From him the invest!- 



HEREDITY 169 

gators were able to trace no less than 480 descendants, of 
whom 143 were feeble-minded, while only 46 could be dis- 
covered to be definitely normal! Among these 480 human 
beings springing from the line of Martin Kallikak, Jr., who 
was himself known as "the Old Horror," the following have 
been diagnosed: 

36 illegitimates. 

33 sexually immoral persons, mostly prostitutes. 

24 confirmed alcoholics. 

3 epileptics. 
82 died in infancy. 

3 criminals. 

8 kept houses of ill-fame. 

These 480 descendants in direct line from Martin Kalli- 
kak, Jr., married naturally into other families of about the 
same type, so that the investigators were able to chart al- 
together 1146 individuals thus contaminated by the bad 
blood of the Kallikaks. Of these 1146 individuals 262 have 
been classed already as positively feeble-minded, with 581 
still undetermined! 

And this is a family record! 

Let us look now at another side of the same picture. After 
Martin Kallikak, Sr., left the army at the termination of 
the Revolutionary War he married a normal girl of good 
family like his own, and through this union there has de- 
scended another line of human beings in every way the re- 
verse of the first line initiated with the alliance made with 
the feeble-minded girl. Altogether Dr. Goddard was able 
to tabulate 496 direct descendants of this second union of 
Martin Kallikak, Sr. And what a different and refreshing 
picture is presented in this side of the line. Of the entire 
496 individuals, not a single person has been found who was 
not normal in every respect! Three of them were somewhat 
degenerate sexually or alcoholically, but this is a ratio which 
could probably be equaled in but few families in which 
nearly 500 persons were studied. But not only were all 



170 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

these persons normal; more than that, "all of the legitimate 
children of Martin, Sr., married into the best families in 
their State, the descendants of colonial governors, signers 
of the Declaration of Independence, soldiers, and even the 

THE FAT.T.TTfAy FAMILY. 



Uartls Ealllkak, Sr 




The 
fec'ble-minded 
woman 



The 

Dormal 

woman 



Martin, Jr 



Millard 



Fig. 6. A FAMILY RECORD 



From this line a total of 480 direct de- 
scendants were traced. Of them 143 
were feeble-minded. Only 46 normals 
were found 



From this line 496 direct descendants 
were traced. None were feeble- 
minded ! Many eminent people are 
included in this branch of the Kal- 
likak family 



founders of a great university. Indeed, in this family and 
its collateral branches we find nothing but good representa- 
tive citizenship. There are doctors, lawyers, educators, 
traders, landholders, in short, respectable citizens, men and 
women prominent in every phase of social life. They have 
scattered over the United States and are prominent in their 
communities wherever they have gone. . . ." 

This is another family record! 

The conclusions from such an interesting and significant 
investigation as this are obvious. The study is especially 
interesting because both lines of descendants issue from the 
same original father, Martin Kallikak, Sr. By marrying 



HEREDITY 171 

into a normal family he produced good citizens; by in- 
dulgence with a feeble-minded girl he produced not only 
bad citizens, but criminals and profligates and idiots. There 
is probably no more striking illustration of the power of 
heredity than this study of the Kallikak family. Mate 
good with good and good will inevitably result; mate good 
with positively bad and a mixture will result in which the 
bad will be striking if not predominant. Try if you can to 
visualize and fancy all the shame and the degradation and 
the crime and the suflFering and the filth of the feeble-minded 
line! Estimate if you can the expense which society has 
been compelled to sustain in supporting the paupers and 
penalizing the criminals, and protecting itself from the 
perverts during the hundred and fifty years or less since 
Martin Kallikak inflicted society with the fruits of his in- 
discretion. And then pause to reflect that the end is not 
yet, for with every oncoming generation there will be born 
again other and yet other children from unfortunate unions 
between the Kallikaks and other families of low-grade abil- 
ities and positively criminal or licentious tendencies, who 
will in turn languish through your schoolrooms and leave 
a murky trail across the age in which they live, until the 
final toll of suffering and crime and outrage cannot be 
computed. 

The Jukes family. Another interesting study in hered- 
ity, somewhat older than that by Dr. Goddard, is that of 
The Jukes. The author of this contribution to the science 
of heredity, Mr. Robert L. Dugdale, chanced to be deputed 
by the New York Prison Association, in 1874, to visit and 
report upon thirteen of the county jails in the State. In one 
county into which his mission sent him, Mr. Dugdale dis- 
covered in the jail awaiting trial six different persons all of 
whom were related. There were two brothers in one branch 
of the family who were under trial for assault with intent to 
kill; a man of fifty -five who had received stolen goods; his 
daughter held as a witness against her own father; her uncle, 
charged with burglary, and an illegitimate daughter of the 



172 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

latter's wife held on a charge of vagrancy. Naturally such 
an array of crime within the same family excited Dugdale's 
curiosity, much as Deborah Kallikak excited the curiosity 
of the Vineland investigators, and he was urged to make a 
more thorough inquiry into their family history and herit- 
age. 

The investigation revealed the fact that these six in- 
dividuals belonged to a family reaching back to the earliest 
colonists. It had lived in the same locality for generations, 
becoming so despised by the self-respecting members of the 
community that their family name had come to be a by- word 
and a hissing. Of twenty-nine male relatives of six persons 
in the county jail, it was discovered that seventeen were 
criminals, fifteen of them being convicted and serving sen- 
tences aggregating seventy-one years. Further inquiry 
led to the discovery that here was a family most of whose 
members lived in filth and squalor, and had always done so 
since time immemorial, and whose highest aims in life ap- 
pear always to have been to prey in some manner upon the 
community. All in all it was a family of ne'er-do-wells, 
criminals, paupers, thieves, and profligates. Mr. Dugdale 
was able to trace the source of the family back to one Max 
Jukes, a frontiersman, born slightly before 1740, and living 
as a hunter, fisher, a hard drinker, jolly and companionable, 
averse to work, a worthless, useless mortal who had a nu- 
merous progeny and nothing to support them with, as is 
so often true of this type of individual. Through an alli- 
ance formed by one of the sons of Max with "Margaret, 
mother of criminals," together with other marriages or 
alliances among other equally worthless individuals, sev- 
eral long lines of descent were initiated. From five of these 
fines, Mr. Dugdale registered and tabulated 540 individuals 
related by blood to the Jukes and 169 by marriage or co- 
habitation, a total of 709 persons. The investigator reached 
the conclusion that altogether the total number of indi- 
viduals of this fine reached approximately 1200, of whom 
he estimates the following characteristics and dispositions : 



HEREDITY 173 

280 paupers. 

140 criminals and offenders. 

250 arrests and trials. 

60 habitual thieves, convicted or unconvicted. 
7 murderers. 

50 prostitutes. 
300 died in infancy or prematurely. 

To these are to be added a great number of other cate- 
gories which we need not pause here to enumerate. Suffice 
it to say that the investigator concluded from his survey of 
the Jukes that, up to 1875, the State of New York had been 
deprived of approximately $1,308,000 in the care and the 
prosecution and the maintenance of and the loss of pro- 
duction from these 1200 people. About the only contribu- 
tion which the Jukes made to the country in return was 
an "unending contribution of crime, pauperism, disease, 
viciousness, and immorality," which has left behind it a 
bitter heritage for coming generations. It is, in other words, 
the same story of the Kallikaks, except that in the case of 
Dr. Goddard's family the heredity was feeble-mindedness, 
whereas in the records of the Jukes feeble-mindedness is a 
lesser factor than crime and pauperism. It makes little 
difference what an individual is, whether he be idiot, crim- 
inal, or ne'er do-well, blood is certain to reveal it in his 
progeny. 

Thus with another family record! 

In the next lesson we shall turn to study a more cheerful 
side of heredity; i.e., lines of descent in which positive and 
beneficial tendencies in the ancestral stock resulted in 
much better citizens than did the descendants of the Kalli- 
kaks and the Jukes. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Look through the files of The Training School, a monthly bulletin 
published by the Vineland investigators, paying special attention to 
the sort of work which is being done in that institution. 

2. Familiarize yourself with the work which is being done in your own 



174 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

State in the way of prevention or treatment of mental defectiveness. 
What are the agencies and organizations which are at work upon the 
matter? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Dugdale, R. L. The Jukes. 

2. Goddard, H. H. The Kallikdk Family. 



n 



LESSON 26 

HEREDITY (continued) 
5. Studies in heredity (continued) 
The Edwards-Tuttle family. In the year 1900, Dr. A. E. 
Winship pubhshed the results of an inquiry into the hered- 
ity of the Edwards-Tuttle family of Connecticut, a hue of 
descent which was just as remarkable in the demonstration 
of the force of heredity on the positive side as was that fur- 
nished by the Kalhkak or the Jukes family on the negative 
side. Here was a family of people numbering among its 
ancestry and present relatives some of the greatest names 
to be found on the roll of our most eminent and illustrious 
citizens. The investigator thus sums up the famous family 
line: 

Thirteen hundred and ninety-four of his [Jonathan Edwards's] 
descendants were identified in 1900, of whom 295 were college 
graduates; 13 presidents of our greatest colleges, besides many 
principals of other important educational institutions; 60 physi- 
cians, many of whom were eminent; 100 and more clergymen, mis- 
sionaries or theological professors; 75 were officers in the army and 
navy; 60 were prominent authors and writers, by whom 135 books 
of merit were written and published and 18 important periodicals 
edited; 33 American States and several foreign countries, and 92 
American cities and many foreign cities, have profited by the benefi- 
cent influence of their emment activity; 100 and more were law- 
yers, of whom one was our most eminent professor of law; 30 were 
judges, 80 held public office, of whom one was vice-president of the 
United States; 3 were United States senators; several were gover- 
nors, members of Congress, framers of state constitutions, mayors 
of cities, and ministers to foreign courts; one was president of the 
Pacific Mail Steamship Company; 15 railroads, many banks, in- 
surance companies, and large industrial enterprises have been m- 
debted to their management. Almost if not every department of 
social progress and of public weal has felt the impulse of this 



176 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

healthy, long-lived family. It is not known that any one of them 
was ever convicted of crime. 

What a contrast between this family record and those of 
the Kallikak, and Jukes lines! In the one case social uplift, 
good citizenship, eminence, genius; in the other, social 
degradation, crime, idiocy. And yet in both cases it was 
the same subtle power of heredity which largely predeter- 
mined the characteristic traits: in the former cases, this 
force was beneficent; in the latter, malignant. 

Galton's Hereditary Genius. Many years before Dr. 
Winship published the records of the Edwards - Tuttle 
family, Sir Francis Galton, whom you recall as the origi- 
nator of the two laws of ancestral inheritance and filial regres- 
sion outlined in Lesson 23, published a very interesting 
volume, entitled Hereditary Genius, An Inquiry into its 
Laivs and Consequences. The book was the result of a very 
exhaustive and painstaking study of a large number of 
eminent statesmen, scientists, literary men, artists, musi- 
cians, etc., together with many of their relatives, with the 
purpose of discovering whether or not such eminent persons 
numbered among their relatives and ancestry more persons 
of eminence than would be found to be true of the families 
and ancestors of average men. Galton's method deserves 
a w^ord of explanation, since it involved the application of a 
theory or principle which is in itself interesting. 

The method which Galton employed was, briefly stated, 
as follows. By dint of an examination of several biographi- 
cal handbooks of his time, of the obituary notices published 
in the Times for a single year, and of other records of promi- 
nent men and women, he reached as a working basis the 
test of an eminent man as "one who has achieved a position 
that is attained by only 250 persons in a million of men, or 
by one person in each 4000, . . . although the mass of those 
with whom I deal are far more rigidly selected — many are 
as one in a million, and not a few are as one in many mil- 
lions. I use the term 'illustrious' when speaking of these." 



HEREDITY 177 

With the aid of this standard of "one in 4000" Galton pro- 
ceeded to "measure" the relatives and ancestors of seme 
of the greatest personages the world has ever produced. In 
this section we can only refer to a very few of the thousands 
of individuals included in the survey. 

In the case of great generals, Galton found that Alexander 
the Great was himself the son of an illustrious father, 
Philip II of Macedon, and an exceptional mother, Olympias. 
Ptolemy-Soter I, King of Egypt, was Alexander's half- 
brother. Besides these illustrious relatives, Alexander's 
half-nephew, Ptolemy Philadelphus, his cousin, Pyrrhus, 
King of Epirus, and a son, Ptolemy Euergetes, were all 
famed men of varying degree. Napoleon, too, numbered 
among his relatives a mother, sister, brother, son, and two 
nephews whose eminence is unquestioned. Julius CiEsar's 
illustrious relatives included his mother, Aurelia; his daugh- 
ter, Julia; his niece, Atia, who became the mother of Augus- 
tus; his great-nephew, Augustus Csesar; his uncle, the 
Consul of Rome; and Mark Antony, who was also related to 
him. Hannibal's relatives well known in history were 
Hamilcar Barca, his father; Hasdrubal, his brother; Mago, 
another brother; and another half-brother who was a gen- 
eral in Spain. So in the case of P. Cornelius Scipio, con- 
queror of Hannibal — a father, grandfather, son, daughter, 
and two grandsons were all people of fame in their time. 

Of literary men Galton demonstrated to his own satis- 
faction that the ancestral lines numbered other individuals 
of repute in a great number of instances. For example, the 
case of Charles Lamb and his sister is cited; as is also that 
of Macaulay, with his grandfather, father, uncle, cousin, and 
nephew, all of whom were illustrious statesmen or writers. 
Dean Swift, the satirist, was a first cousin of Dryden, the 
poet, and also of Deane Swift, his biographer. Theophilus 
Swift, a second cousin, was a political writer of much promi- 
nence. Sir Philip Sydney was the son of a prominent father 
and grandfather. He also numbered among his relatives 
a famed uncle, cousin, and a sister, Mary, to whom he dedi- 



178 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

cated his Arcadia. A nephew of his also was a Chancellor 
of Oxford. 

Among men of science Gallon cites the line of Aristotle, 
whose father, grandson, and second cousin, Callisthenes, 
were known to fame. Francis Bacon, "the wisest, bright- 
est, meanest of mankind," was the son of a Lord Chancellor 
of England, and of a mother widely known as a scholar. 
Other members of this family who attained prominence in- 
cluded a grandson, cousin, brother, two half-brothers, and 
a nephew whose names ranked high among the intellectuals 
of their day. Charles Darwin, the biologist, belonged to a 
family in which at least four others were noted naturalists- 
Samuel T. Coleridge, among the poets, was the father of 
two illustrious sons and a daughter, and had three nephews, 
a grandson, and a cousin who became likewise famous. 
Wordsworth, too, numbered among his eminent relatives 
a brother, who was Master of Trinity College, and three 
nephews, one of whom was Headmaster of Harrow while the 
other two were known as excellent scholars. 

One of the most interesting divisions is that of the musi- 
cians, and one of the most interesting families among them 
is that of Bach. Fifty-seven members of that family found 
places in the biographical collections of musicians. The 
father of Sebastian Bach was a distinguished organist. 
Bach's first cousin, J. Christopher, was one of the greatest 
musicians of Germany. His son, Guillaume Frederick, 
"Bach of Halle," was a man of great power and learning; 
Emmanuel, another son, called "Bach of Berlin," was the 
founder of pianoforte music. Another son, Christopher, 
called "Bach of England," was a very charming composer. 
Mendelssohn's grandfather was a celebrated Jewish phi- 
losopher; his father was a rich banker of Berlin. The great 
musician had a sister who was said to be Mendelssohn's 
equal at the piano, and possessed of high genius. In the 
family of Mozart, the father of the great composer was a 
famous viohnist and composer. A sister of the first was 
likewise a talented musician. Mozart had two sons. 



HEREDITY 179 

Charles and Wolfgang, both of whom were accomplished 
players and composers. 

A great deal has been written about this investigation 
by Galton, and some of the criticisms which have been made 
of it are not without good basis. For example, many of the 
greatest musicians, such for example as Wagner, Schubert, 
and Handel, are not included in Galton's list of musicians. 
The same is true of his lists of authors, scientists, poets, et al. 
It has been objected, too, that many of the persons whom 
he does include in his records were neither geniuses nor 
near geniuses, but were rather cited by Galton in order to 
make out his case. In spite of these substantial criticisms, 
however, Galton demonstrated conclusively that talent in 
a very great number of families finds expression in more than 
one member of such families. Of the exceptions to this 
rule he admitted that he did not take account. His own 
i^ conclusions are "that eminently gifted men are raised above 
mediocrity as much as idiots are depressed below it"; that 
"few people win high merit without possessing peculiar 
gifts"; that "if a man is gifted with vast intellectual ability, 
eagerness to work, and power of working, such a man can- 
not be repressed"; and that "we must not permit ourselves 
to consider each human or other personality as something 
supernaturally added to the stock of nature, but rather as 
a segregation of what already existed, under a new shape, 
and as a regular consequence of previous conditions. . . . 
We may look upon each individual as something not wholly 
detached from its parent source, — as a wave that has been 
lifted and shaped by normal conditions in an unknown, il- 
limitable ocean." 

Heredity in Royalty. In 1906 Dr. Frederick A. Woods 
published another study in heredity, entitled Mental and 
Moral Heredity in Royalty. The personages investigated 
were the members of the royal families of the chief countries 
in Europe, and the method employed was similar to that 
used by Galton in his study of hereditary genius, discussed 
above. On the basis oi the \a,w oi deviation from the averagey 




180 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

Dr. Woods graded all the 832 characters studied on a scale 
of 10, according to both their intellect and their morals. 
Obviously, from the very nature of the law, the greatest 
number of all should be found to occupy an average posi- 
tion on the scale around 4 to 6. Below 4 would be a de- 
creasing number down to 1, the idiots and incompetents, 
while above 6 would be a correspondingly decreasing num- 
ber of the unusually bright and the geniuses up to 10. As a 
guide in his classification he depended, as did Galton, on 
the leading biographical dictionaries of the time and upon 
the stamp which history has given to the rulers and their 
families. 

T> ?^ ^l%r^^ ''}^^' ^^'^ P'^''^''* ^^"g °f England [at that time. 
Edward VII] and including all his ancestors to four generations, and 
then all the other descendants from these ancestors, and stretch- 
mg out m every direction by this endless-chain method, I have 
at present obtained mental and moral descriptions of over 600 
inter-related individuals, including pretty completely the follow- 
ing countries of Europe: England (House of Hanover), Germany 
trance, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Austria. Italy, Russia' 
Denmark and Sweden. The period covered extends in general 
back to about the sixteenth century, but in the case of Spain and 
Portugal to the eleventh century. 

AH the above families are related through some connecting 
link. 

In general, without entering in detail into the results of 
Dr. Woods's interesting and laborious work, it may be said 
that his conclusions are much hke those of Galton. He 
finds, for instance, that there is a distinct correlation be- 
tween intellectual abilities and moral qualities in royalty 
that neither luxury nor consanguineous marriages nor ex- 
alted position have proven unfavorable to the inheritance 
of ability; that " heredity explains all (or at least 90 per cent) 
ot the intellectual side of character in practically every in- 
stance"; and that "even in the moral side of character 
inherited tendencies outweigh the effects of surroundings '' 
Wherever degeneration in royal lines has occurred, Woods 



HEREDITY 181 

finds that such degeneration is to be explained on the grounds 
of pollution of the blood through marriage with a family 
in which a degeneration was then existing. However, de- 
generacy in royalty appears to be not nearly so evident as 
popular belief might lead us to think. In the 832 persons 
studied there were found no less than 25 world geniuses 
"who stand without superiors in the practical domains of 
war and government," a ratio which it would be hard to 
duplicate in any other department or condition of society. 
"The royal breed is superior to any other one family, be it 
that of noble or commoner." Finally, "the upshot of it 
all is that, as regards intellectual life, environment is a 
totally inadequate explanation." 

It would appear, then, from these two classic inquiries 
into the nature of human heredity that heredity is a prime 
influence in shaping and moulding the possibilities of life. 
Environment remains a tremendous factor, as we shall see, 
in the evolution of every human being, but the driving 
force appears to be installed by heredity. In the next 
lesson we shall endeavor to draw some conclusions from our 
survey of heredity which will be of significance to our work 
as educators and trainers of the child. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Study the principle of deviation from the average as outlined in Gal- 
ton's Hereditary Genius. 

2. Report upon the House of Hanover as tabulated by Woods in his 
Heredity in Royalty. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Galton, Fr. Hereditary Genius. 

2. Winship, A. E. Jukes-Edwards; A Study of Education and Heredity. 

3. Woods, F. A. Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty, 



LESSON 27 

HEREDITY (continued) 
6. The Heritage of the Children 
What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Evidences of mental or intellectual differences between the 
pupils, such, for example, as differences in interestedness, 
powers of concentration, command of language and expres- 
sion, keenness of perception, type of memory, imaginativeness, 
reasoning ability, ease and faithfulness of association, etc. 

2. Evidences of social differences between the pupils (i.e., differ- 
ences in politeness, good behavior, conscientiousness, social 
adaptability on the playground, qualities of leadership, 
capacities of "mixing" well, seclusiveness, etc.). 

3. Evidences of scholastic differences: differences of ability in 
specific studies, such as aritlmietic, history, language work, 
drawing, etc. Does the pupil who is bright in one study appear 
to be bright in most or all the other subjects.'' 

Some practical conclusions. We have now completed 
our brief survey of the field of heredity, and turn in this 
lesson to an application of the facts and principles discussed 
in the preceding five lessons to our work as students of 
childhood and as teachers. It should be reiterated at the 
cutset that our knowledge of the principles underlying hu- 
man heritage is at best scant and fragmentary, and that 
any conclusions which may be suggested by our present 
knowledge are subject to revision as experimentation ad- 
vances along this fascinating line. It is probable, however, 
that the records of our racial and ancestral past are now 
sufficiently complete to warrant making the following 
summary. 

Racial heredity. Nature never makes any mistakes in 
her breeding. Of this fact we may be assured. Whatever 
may appear upon the surface to be an abortion and an ab- 
surdity of nature will be found ultimately to be the result 



4 



HEREDITY 183 

of a very definite and doubtless a very wise natural law. In 
the wider aspect of racial heredity, one can catch something 
of nature's inexorable constancy in the faithfulness with 
which she fashions her children true to race and type and 
stature. For example, the child of the negro blood is 
unerringly black; the child of the white parent is unerringly 
white. In a similar way the children of all colors of skin 
continue and perpetuate the color of their racial forbears. 
Likewise with respect to physical characteristics which are 
fundamental. The height of human beings, we may be- 
lieve, has remained tolerably constant for thousands of 
generations, as have also their approximate weight and 
girth. Any chance or unusual variation in the physical 
averages of human beings has in the past always tended in 
the next or subsequent generations to approach the mean, 
in accordance with the expectations of Gal ton's law of 
filial regression. 

Physical aspects of heredity. Accordingly children 
should prove in the great mass of cases to be more like their 
parents in physical characteristics than less. Children of 
parents below the average height or weight should tend to 
be of lesser height and weight than they, but at the same 
time should be found to approach somewhat the type, or 
average. Occasionally, however, our calculations appear 
to be utterly upset. Now and again the son or daughter 
of parents of mediocre height will shoot up nearly a foot 
taller, while on the other hand those of parents of unusual 
height will be found less tall than the average. For such 
exceptions as these the science of heredity can offer as yet 
no thoroughly dependable explanation. Often, it is true, 
a child "takes after" his mother and not his father in the 
matter of height or features or complexion, etc.; often he 
"takes after" the latter rather than the former. Often, 
too, the child appears to be not a whit like either father or 
mother in any physical characteristic. In such case there 
are at least two possible sources of his variance with 
the parents. In the first case, he may have inherited a 



184 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMiVL SCHOOLS 

"blended" character; i.e., one in which the characteristics 
of both mother and father appear to be commingled in him. 
In the second case, he may draw 100 per cent of his char- 
acteristics from neither mother nor father, nor from both 
together, but rather from some other ancestor, for example 
a grandfather or a grandmother, or perhaps an uncle or 
aunt, or some other member of the ancestral line. 

Thus uncertain and baffling are the problems of heredity. 
Thus, too, you can understand how hopeless a task an ex- 
perimenter or inquirer into the nature of heredity faces when 
he attempts to formulate mathematical computations and 
probabilities in this most elusive and apparently contra- 
dictory field. You recall from Lesson 23 that Galton as- 
cribed a certain definite and constant amount of weight to 
the influence of the immediate parents, grandparents, ct al, 
in the formation of the natures of a child. You see now, 
however, that while Galton's law of ancestral inheritance 
may hold true, and apparently does, for the greatest num- 
ber of cases, it does not explain the striking variations from 
type which one continually meets. One needs to remember 
always in his contemplation of the problems of heredity that 
every child has a countless host of ancestors, after any one 
of whom, theoretically, he may take any of his physical 
characteristics. As a matter of fact, however, it is probably 
rare that a child resembles to any great degree any one of 
his ancestors more removed than three or four generations 
Mental inheritance. In general, what we have said con- 
cernmg the mheritance of physical characteristics applies 
equally well to the heritabihty of mental and moral char- 
acteristics. It is obvious, however, that the environment 
mto which the child is born is of far more profound influence 
upon these characteristics than it is upon the purely physi- 
cal characteristics, which are inborn absolutely, and which 
develop relatively independent of varying influences of en- 
vironment. In general, then, you may expect the children 
whom you teach to be on the whole more like their parents 
than unhke them; but you may expect also that a consid- 



HEREDITY 185 

erable number will manifest pronounced variations from 
either or from both. As a rule, ability in handwriting, or in 
linguistics, or in mathematics, or in some form of artistic 
expression, or in inventiveness and originality, etc., which 
is apparent in the child, may be assumed to have been pres- 
ent in his immediate ancestry, at least to a degree. Such 
abilities in a family line may be called "specialized" abil- 
ities. In like manner, a child who is disposed to neurotic 
tendencies, or to epilepsy or abnormality of any sort, is more 
likely than not to be the child of parents in whom similar 
deviations from the normal exist. It should be borne care- 
fully in mind, however, that owing to the uncertainties of 
heredity perfectly normal parents may have markedly ab- 
normal children, and hence the teacher needs to be particu- 
larly careful in passing mental judgment on any family from 
which a subnormal or an abnormal child happens to come. 
She will find not infrequently that, because of this same 
variableness of hereditary forces, of two or more children 
coming from the same family and the same surroundings 
one may be hopelessly subnormal, while the other or the 
rest may be unusually brilliant pupils. With the last men- 
tioned the teacher can literally work wonders educationally, 
while before the former she stands all but helpless. Pro- 
fessor Walter expresses this truism happily thus: "A genius 
must be born of potential germ plasm. No amount of 
faithful, plodding apphcation can compensate for a lack of 
the divine hereditary spark at the start." 

Even between twins there are sometimes observable the 
most marked differences, either physically or mentally. 
The one may be retiring and modest in the extreme; or he 
may be dull at his studies, or slow of comprehension, or chol- 
eric in temperament. The other, child of the same par- 
ents, of the same age, and the product of identical pre-natal 
and post-natal forces, may be a leader in his group, bril- 
liant in study, of happy, sanguinary temperament. The 
one may likewise be tall, the other short; the one stout, 
the other slim. All these and many other divergencies may 



186 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

appear. The general rule, however, will hold; viz.: that 
children of the same family are more hke than they are 
unhke. Thorndike found, for instance, upon measuring 
fifty pairs of twins in the New York City schools, that the 
resemblance between them was greater than between other 
children not so related. And yet it is quite possible, and 
often actually so happens, that one of the twins may draw 
50 per cent or more of his character from one parent, while 
the other of the two draws similarly from the other. Or, 
again, the one might be possessed of a blended inheritance, 
while the other was not; or the two might draw any per- 
centage of their respective characters from different an- 
cestors further back than their immediate parentage. 

The inevitableness of heredity. Enough has been said 
in the last few lessons to demonstrate the inevitableness of 
heredity. It matters not whether the ancestral line be one 
like that of Max Jukes, or Martin Kallikak, or whether, on 
the other hand, it be one like that of Napoleon, or Bach, or 
Haydn, its perpetuation in offspring of like characteristics 
is absolute. This simply means, applied to the average 
children with whom you will be thrown in contact in your 
everyday teaching, that children and parents are chips off 
the same ancestral block, whether that block be rotten or 
sound. This being true, the first limit which is set to your 
beneficent work as teachers is that set by the ancestry 
of those whom you would teach. It is impossible for the 
teacher to create capacities which are foreign to the heredi- 
tary stock of any child. She may labor incessantly and ex- 
haust all the fine arts of her teaching methods ; at best she can 
only provide a favorable setting in which the traits handed 
on from other generations may find favorable opportunity 
for unfolding in the present. Beyond this she is not able 
to go. The famous contention of Jefferson that all men are 
created free and equal should, in the hght of heredity, read, 
" all children are born bound and unequal," for surely orig- 
inal nature varies in all of us. 

This suggests the need of a larger amount of individual 



HEREDITY 187 

work and attention devoted to all children in school. If 
every child differs inherently from every other child, it is 
the duty and responsibility of the school system to dis- 
cover very early in the school life of the child any peculiar 
and promising traits which he may possess, or any marked 
limitations in capacity in order that the school environment 
may be so manipulated as to be made of the greatest possi- 
ble advantage to him. At the present time, as you are 
aware, there are a great number of children to be found in 
almost all school systems who are distinctly below the av- 
erage in mental endowment, and whose presence within 
any given grade operates to retard the progress of the whole 
group of children of average ability, to say nothing of the 
effect upon the progress of those few in the upper third of 
the grade whose abilities are marked. To such children the 
average teacher is compelled to devote an amount of time 
out of all proportion to their number and merits ; or else she 
is forced to the opposite extreme and tends to neglect such 
children of meager equipment, in spite of the fact that 
actually those are the very pupils who stand most in need 
of every possible effort in their behalf. 

Deviation from the normal. We have already referred to 
•this principle of deviation from the normal, or average. In 
any group of adult human beings, for example, it will be 
found upon investigation that the great mass approximate 
a certain fairly uniform height, which we may call the av- 
erage. But on the one extreme from the average will be a 
small percentage of the total number whose height deviates 
by several inches from the average, while on the opposite 
extreme will be found a relatively similar percentage whose 
deviation from the average is likewise several inches, hut 
in the opposite direction. That is, for example, the average 
height of the mass of men may be five feet and eight inches ; 
but there will be a few who are not more than five feet tall, 
with intermediate heights all the way up to the medium. 
There will also be a few who measure perhaps six feet and 
two or three or more inches, with intermediate heights again 



188 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORAIAL SCHOOLS 

all the way downward to the medium. This same principle 
holds true of mental capacities and abilities. The great 
mass of children in a given grade will perhaps rank around 
90 per cent; at the same time there will be variants from 
this average down to 70 per cent, or 50 per cent, and perhaps 
much lower. A few children will rank at 100 per cent, or at 
98 per cent, or 95 per cent, and will constitute distinctly a 
grade of intelligence well above the average. Of course it 
must be borne in mind that there are many children who 
are kept back from attaining their own maximum rate of 
progress from purely extraneous reasons, such as illness, or 
inability to use and understand readily the English lan- 
guage, or from related causes, and we must be careful to 
make allowances for all such possible circumstances in 
judging the innate abilities of children. 

We might extend our application of this law of deviation 
from the average to every subject of study. Some children, 
for instance, will be very backward in arithmetic, while 
others will be unusually capable — the mass will fall mid- 
way between both extremes. So with most other studies, 
and not infrequently the same child who ranks as "ex- 
cellent" in literature may rank as "poor" in mathematics, 
although such specializations of abilities in the common 
subjects of the elementary school are probably less often 
met with than might be supposed. Back of all these vari- 
ablenesses and discrepancies of abilities in school children, 
more potent than environment, stand the inexorable laws 
of heredity. You can no more set them aside than you 
can set aside any of nature's laws : they can be mitigated to 
a limited extent, but never effaced or altered. 

We have now looked sufficiently into the nature of he- 
redity and its laws to be able to appreciate that there is no 
sharp line of demarcation which divides all children into 
distinct classes labeled "normal" and "abnormal," respec- 
tively. Rather the intricate possibilities of the germ plasm 
are such that one level of intelligence shades off almost im- 
perceptibly into a lower level, on the one hand and, on the 



HEREDITY 189 

other, into a higher one, until by slow gradation the two 
opposite poles of mental endowment are reached. The 
lower of these is intellectual zero, the higher represents 
genius. Without exception, the place occupied by any 
individual upon this scale depends upon his heritage or 
non-heritage of talent. We shall return to this subject in 
Lessons 41 and 42, when we shall inquire more specifically 
into the characteristics of dull and of brighter children. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Is it according to your observation that children resemble on the 
whole their parents? Do you know of any marked exceptions to this 
rule? 

2. Compute mathematically the number of direct ancestors you have 
had since 1620, allowing thirty years to each generation. 

3. Do you know of any cases in which normal parents have markedly 
subnormal children? Can you explain such apparent inversions of 
natural law? 

4. Do you know of any children who possess conspicuous talent in any 
line? Is there any immediate explanation of this in their parentage 
so far as you know it? 

5. Study the origin of the normal probability curve. (Reference 3.) 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Conklin, E. G. Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men, 
chap. 3. 

2. Norsworthy, N., and Whitley, M. T. Psychology of Childhood, chap. 1. 

3. Walter, H. E. Genetics, chap. 12. 

4. Popenoe, P., and Johnson, R. H. Applied Eugenics, chap. 3. 



LESSON 28 

TRANSITION TO LEARNED BEHAVIOR — 
ENVIRONMENT 

What to look for in the observation period : 

1. Evidences of the persistence in the children of bad habits of 
speech. Can you tell roughly the class of home from which 
many a boy and girl comes by their speech habits? 

2. If possible, observe a lesson in reading in the seventh or 
eighth grades, and determine whether the story that is being 
studied is of a tj'pe that should naturally make an appeal to 
the interests of boys and girls of thirteen or fourteen years of 
age. 

3. Are there any appointments or factors in the general environ- 
ment of the school which you think might have an unsalu- 
tary influence upon the pupils? What are some especially 
fortunate mouldmg influences in the surroundings? 

Heredity versus environment. In the preceding lessons 
in heredity it may have appeared that environmental 
factors seem to play only a slight part in the evolution of 
the child. It is necessary now, however, to turn to a more 
complete statement concerning environment, which after 
all is a highly important and significant factor in the de- 
velopment of every one of us. Within the meaning of the 
term environment are included all those forces in the ex- 
ternal surroundings of the child which influence in any way 
his mental or physical or moral growth. Now if you will 
pause to consider the matter for a moment you will be com- 
pelled to conclude that there are very few things indeed in 
the world of the child which do not in some way have a 
bearing upon him. His home, school, playmates, church, 
all modify in some way his original nature and exert a pro- 
nounced influence over his behavior. Of two boys, for ex- 
ample, possessed of similar original endowments, the en- 
vironmental forces of the one may exert such a profound 



TRANSITION TO LEARNED BEHAVIOR 191 

influence upon him as to cause him to develop into an al- 
together different individual from the other. The accom- 
panying diagram (Fig. 7) illustrates what has appropri- 
ately been called the triangle of life. You will note that. 



^ 
1"h 









/ 




1 

/ 



Fig. 7. THE TRIANGLE OF LIFE 
Indicating how training and environment may operate to produce 
from the same hereditary stocks (or equivalent hereditary stocks) 
individuals strikingly different from one another. (Reproduced by 
special permission of the Princeton University Press from Conklin's 
Heredity and Environment in the making of Men.) 

given an identical base (heredity) two or more individuals 
may unfold into widely dissimilar personalities because of 
the varying pressures exerted by the two side lines (training 
and environment). Thus, while we said in the last lesson 
that heredity sets the first limit of an individual, it is evi- 
dent that environmental agencies may operate to evolve 
from like original natures unlike individuals within the 
same limitations. There is, however, much evidence to 
show that like qualities in original nature persist markedly 
regardless of differences in environment, and that unlike 
qualities persist regardless of sameness in environment. 

The question has often been asked, which is relatively 
the more important factor in human development, heredity 



192 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

or environment? This is a matter about which we need 
concern ourselves little. As well attempt to answer the 
question, which is the more indispensable element, water or 
air? Both heredity and environment are important agen- 
cies in the building up of an individual, and it is inconceiv- 
able that such an idle question should occupy the minds 
of teachers who are in search of dependable information. 
Possibly the only satisfactory answer to the question is 
to be found in the careful words of Sir Roger de Coverley: 
"Much might be said on either side." 

Some important factors in environment. Let us examine 
some of the more obviously significant forces in the en- 
vironment of the child which our own observation and 
experience inform us to be inevitable in their influence over 
young people generally. In the home, undoubtedly one 
of the most tremendous forces exerted over the child is the 
language which is used habitually. You will not be a 
teacher very long before you will make the discovery for 
yourself that the language used by your children is the lan- 
guage of their respective homes, and it is likely that you 
will struggle valiantly and sometimes in a seemingly losing 
fight to encourage your boys and girls to form the habit 
of making the appropriate substitutes for the omnipresent 
"ain'ts" and "hain'ts," and "ain't guts," and "hain't guts," 
and a score of other speech-barbarisms which sully the 
spoken word. Children coming from more or less careful 
homes where a reasonable standard of pure speech is the 
rule will inevitably use choicer language than those com- 
ing from homes where a mixture of purities and impurities 
of speech is the standard. Then, too, on the part of the 
home environment, the manners and habits of politeness and 
courtesy and obedience and the attitudes of mind and the 
tastes in dress and the attention to simple rules of hygiene 
are all of extreme significance in the development of the 
children. You will find in the same schoolroom the most 
glaring contradictions and inconsistencies in these several 
respects, and will at times be quite at a loss to secure the im- 



TRANSITION TO LEARNED BEHAVIOR 193 

provements which you desire in all cases. Obviously hered- 
ity plays a not inconspicuous part here, in that as a rule 
those children whose parents are the neatest or the most 
careful in their speech, etc., may be assumed to belong to 
better ancestral stock than do those children among whose 
parents the reverse is true. There are, however, exceptions 
to this, as to most other rules. 

We have already discussed the gang instinct, and have 
seen that the influence exerted by one's "set" or group is of 
much significance. The child may come from ever so good 
a family, but, if he belongs to a bad group, the innate and 
instilled habits and attitudes and ideals are likely to suffer 
grievously. How many a life which has started with all the 
promise and glamour of happy, normal youth has ended dis- 
astrously in young manhood, and all because the influences 
into which it drifted were unfortunate ! Outside of heredity 
alone there is probably no other force exerted upon boys and 
girls which equals that exerted by the company in which 
they move. Many parents in these days, when the call of 
the street is so insistent and enticing, are striving success- 
fully to combat the influences of the street and of the ques- 
tionable group by fitting up for their boys an attic chamber, 
or some room in the house which they can call their own, 
and where they can store all their choicest treasures, and 
where, too, they may receive and entertain all their boyish 
friends. There is no question as to the positive value of 
such a wise provision as this. Happy the boy who possesses 
such a sanctum sanctorum wherein he is monarch of all he 
surveys, and wherein he may do and play whatsoever he 
will, within the proper limits. There is probably no hap- 
pier nor more attractive place than the boy's den in the 
whole realm of childhood. 

The environment of the school, except in so far as the 
influence of the gang extends within it, makes up what we 
called the training side of the triangle of life, and as such 
we are not properly concerned with it in a book of this 
sort, which deals rather with childhood than with organized 



194 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

methods of teaching childhood. There are two other forces 
in the environment of children which deserve special con- 
sideration at this point. These are the reading matter of 
boys and girls, and the amusements in which they in- 
dulge. 

The reading matter of children. If you try to recall the 
interests of your own childhood you will undoubtedly find 
that one of the stronger forces which exerted a moulding 
influence over you was the reading which you did outside 
of actual studying. Probably you still recall one or two 
favorite stories, like Little Women, or Little Men, or some 
other tale which held you in fascination for hours as you 
followed the magical unfolding of it from the first page to 
the last. And it may be that after it was finished you 
regretted having read it so fast! Possibly, too, you have 
smce reread the same favorite stories of childhood and have 
found in them ever-recurring pleasures which you did not 
before experience. Such is the spell created about one by 
a thoroughly enjoyable story! 

It is but a step after all from your own childish interests 
to those of your children. The same wonderland of saga 
and romance through which you journeyed happily spreads 
before your own children, and they experience the same de- 
lights along the wayside as did you. What need for careful 
supervision is there m all this matter of reading' Not a day 
passes in which new books of the lighter sort do not appear 
fresh from the press. Some of them are good, some are bad • 
some are mdifferent. Every child who enters the stage of 
late childhood IS heir to a heritage in literature greater than 
that enjoyed by any child preceding. And yet how few 
children ever are really introduced to their heritage! Many 
a poor, famishing heart, beating fast in the breast of boy 
or girl, feeds upon the husks of literature. And many a 
broken man or woman looks back upon his or her early read- 
ing matter and denounces it as having been the strongest 
agency in their undoing. 
But even though human life be not broken by trashy 



TRANSITION TO LEARNED BEHAVIOR 195 

reading, it is yet often limited and hedged in from a wider, 
freer universe by the sordid and the impossible and the 
absurd in what flourishes under the name of "hterature." 
Often a young adolescent finds his views of Ufe and his 
sense of values hopelessly distorted and overturned by the 
books which he devours. A new heaven and a new earth 
surround him, but the heaven is murky and the earth is un- 
real. Contrast with this adolescent the one who has been 
led by wise guides of childish steps and interests to enjoy 
the best things in literature, in so far as they are within his 
powers of comprehension and his range of interests. In the 
past we have had few school libraries, but they are coming 
to be a modern necessity to the end that there may be al- 
ways before and available to one the best that the magic 
world of fancy has to oflFer children in every age. And there 
are an infinite multitude of such tales, graded according to 
the age and intelligence and interests of children. With 
them every teacher should be tolerably familiar, and no 
teacher has any right to stand in a schoolroom as a master 
workman who cannot pick out or recommend to any boy or 
any girl of any age a story book which will exactly suit the 
individual case. If you feel that you are not able to do 
this, by all means leave off reading the latest popular fiction 
until you have familiarized yourself to a degree at least 
with the available things in juvenile literature. 

A word should be said, too, regarding children's maga- 
zines and periodicals. If a wise relative ever subscribed 
for you to one of the many available publications of this 
sort you can still recall the eagerness with which you looked 
forward to the regular weekly or monthly appearance of the 
magazine in order to discover what was recommended to be 
built or played, or to turn eagerly to the " continued story " 
which left off last month at the most interesting point, and 
to peruse it to its happy outcome. Many a day was made 
happier and many an evening more enjoyable by absorbing 
one's self in the pages of such magazines as these. Do you 
think you could advise a parent who might ask you what 



196 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIilAL SCHOOLS 

are some of the periodicals which would be interesting to a 
boy of twelve, or to a girl of nine? 

The conclusion of the whole matter is this : most children 
love to read; reading is a sort of pastime which transports 
one beyond the here and the now and extends his little hori- 
zon of home until it embraces the uttermost parts of the 
earth. Other lands and other scenes, other peoples and 
other children, other ways of living and of playing, heroes 
and heroines of the past, visions into the future, adventure 
and romance — all these exist in the printed page, ready to 
step forth at the word of command from the youthful magi- 
cian. Coexistent with all these, however, are large numbers 
of books which instead of extending the horizon of the 
adolescent outward across the broad, open universe, delve 
rather down into the abysses and maelstroms and under- 
worlds and vortices of life, dragging with them the light, 
airy souls of boys and girls which were meant rather to soar 
aloft than to be contaminated with the pollution of social 
dregs. 

Amusements. Everybody must relax. After periods of 
storm and stress in work there must inevitably succeed peri- 
ods of recuperation in which the organism seeks release and 
relief. Undoubtedly the healthiest form of relaxation is 
that which finds its outlet in physical expression of some sort, 
or at least in mental rivalry such as in games and sports! 
We have not the space here to enter into a discussion of the 
various kinds of amusements in which children seek their 
relief from work, but one form there is which cannot be 
lightly set aside as an environmental force for good or for 
bad upon every child participating. I refer to the general 
motion-picture theater. From the very nature of human 
life and relationships of the present day it is inevitable that 
amusement should be sought in theaters, either orthodox 
play theaters or motion-picture theaters. It has been es- 
timated that once in four weeks every man, woman, and 
child, on the average, in the United States attends the mov- 
mg-picture theater, not to mention the number in the mean- 



TRANSITION TO LEARNED BEHAVIOR 197 

time attending the orthodox theater. Here is, apparently, 
a form of amusement which is attractive and compelling. 
Watch, if you will, the young child, boy or girl, who chances 
to have a bright nickel and a stipulated amount of time on 
his hands and you will see him hovering about the lurid 
posters outside the cheaper theaters in an endeavor to de- 
cide which of the possible theaters offers the most for his 
money! Finally, having made his decision, in he goes and 
becomes at once one of a great number of other children and 
adults whose eyes are fixed upon the wondrous presenta- 
tions on the screen, and from whose minds the whole outer 
world is for the time being quite shut out. Everything is 
oblivion save the animated scenes before one. 

Now there is in all this a danger. The mind of the child 
is very impressionistic, easily influenced toward the good or 
the bad. The new and strange things which he sees de- 
picted upon the screen excite his imagination and furnish 
him food for thought long afterward. Of course if all 
motion-picture films offered were intended primarily for 
children it would be a relatively easy matter to so regulate 
them as to make them at least harmless. The moving- 
picture theater is, however, an institution intended pri- 
marily for adults, and for that very reason offers many 
moral dangers to the children who are always to be found 
there. The average adult theatrical taste has been so long 
outraged that unusually passionate depths or emotional or 
suggestive themes must be touched in order that a picture 
may be creditably received. The influence of such films 
upon the suggestible and omnivorous minds of the children 
cannot but be destructive. Adult relationships and "prob- 
lem plays," and improper situations thrown objectively be- 
fore the fascinated gaze and eager mind of the child upon 
the screen make at best poor sustenance for the unfolding 
mental and moral life of a child. "This portrayal of vice, 
of depravity, of drunkenness, of murder, of brigandage, this 
premature expose of adult passions, adult lust, adult venge- 
ance; this wresting the lid off the dregs of society, this 



198 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

unveiling, as it were, of the tree of life, can but be too s^ 
gestive of emulation and imitation to boys and girls the 
very earmarks of whose souls is the zeal to imitate and 
emulate." And yet it should be remembered that in the 
moving picture properly censored and edited, society has 
a treniendous ally in the training as well as the amusing of 
its children. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Collect and bring to class for discussion as many illustrations as 
possible to show the influence of the home environment upon the 
speech, or manners, or habits, etc., of children. 

2. Do you chance to know of any boys whose parents have provided 
"dens" for their exclusive enjoyment? What has been the effect of 
this provision upon them, so far as you are able to determine? 

3. Observe if possible and report the type of story which you find any 
child to be reading. Can you determine how he reacts to the story? 

4. What experiences have you had which would tend to show the interest 
which children have in moving pictures? The effects of patronizing 
such forms of entertainment upon them? 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. President Eliot made the statement many years ago that the readers 
ordinarily in use in the schools are highly unsatisfactory. Can you 
think of any explanation of such an opinion, if true? Has it been your 
own personal experience in coming up through the schools that the 
natural craving of children for reading material has been satisfactorily 
ministered to by the school reader? 

2. What is your reaction to the following condition of affairs, which is 
by no means an unusual one in many of the smaUer schools of our 
country : 

In a certain country school there were recently four children who 
were deemed by the teacher to be sufficiently advanced in "reading" 
to comprise the 'first class." Consequently, at the beginning of the 
school year the four were put into the "eighth reader." The book 
comprised some thirty selections of prose and verse. The class 
read five times a week. At the end of some six weeks the book was 

the year the identical book was read and re-read, until the fom- must 
as^cordiXI '"^''^ ''^''"''° '* contained - and hated them 

^* Z"^!^ *" ] ''T^^''' ^?"Tv^ °"' ^'- ^"°*'^ suggestion, to introduce 
mto the schookoom "real hterature," carefully adapted to the age 



TRANSITION TO LEARNED BEHAVIOR 199 

and natural interests and likings of the children? Has this already 
been done in many school systems? 
4. The author was at one time a teacher in a system where the orthodox 
"reader" was still used. Believing that boys and girls should become 
passionately fond of the best in literature, according to their natural 
preferences, he consulted with the superintendent concerning the pos- 
sibility of discarding the "readers." He was curtly advised by his 
superior that "readers" were the books that were provided, and 
that "readers" must be used. What would you have done in such 
a situation: would you have permitted the desire for good literature 
to die in a score of boys and girls, or would you have found a way — 
as the writer did? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Conklin, E. G. Heredity and Environment, etc., chap. 4. 

2. Davenport, C. B. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, chap. 8. 

3. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology. 



LESSON 29 
HABIT 

What to looTc for in the observation period: 

1. Any evidences that some children are more plastic, i.e., more 
readily responsive to school influences, than are other chil- 
dren. 

2. Illustrations of the physical plasticity of children, as illus- 
trated in round-shoulderedness, unsymmetrical development, 
bow-legs, or other postural defects. 

Learned versus unlearned behavior. We have now com- 
pleted our survey of the field of unlearned behavior and 
turn our attention from nature to nurture, from the inborn 
potentialities of the organism to the acquired powers and 
attitudes which come about as the result of experience. 
We have seen that the lowest form of unlearned behavior 
possible to living organisms is the tropism; that the next 
higher forms are the automatic and reflexed acts which regu- 
late more or less our physical life; and finally, that the high- 
est form of unlearned behavior is the instinctive activity 
which we have discussed under some dozen or more heads. 
Having enumerated and discussed some of the more im- 
portant instincts we paused for a few lessons to inquire into 
the nature of heredity, which is likewise an inborn force. 
Taken together, all these automatic and reflex and in- 
stinctive forms of behavior, plus all the contributions made 
to an organism by heredity, comprise what we have called 
the original nature of man, or unlearned behavior. 

Suppose, however, that the child of original nature should 
remain throughout his life unmodified by the moulding and 
shaping and directing forces of environment and training; 
suppose no infant were able to perfect or control or trans- 
form or sublimate his instincts; suppose the compulsions of 
an unfortunate heredity could not be in a measure miti- 



HABIT 201 

gated by dint of careful training; what could adulthood be 
under sUch conditions save a prolonged period of infancy.'' 
Or, to be more concrete, suppose that out of the instinctive 
tendency in the child to general physical activity no fineness 
of powers, no modulations and control of voice, no grace- 
fulness of locomotion, no skill in manipulating were to be 
evolved in childhood, youth and manhood. Or again 
suppose out of the talent in music inherited m a specialized 
form from a parent or grandparent the child were never 
able to train and perfect and give artistic form to his ex- 
pression or his technique. He would perforce remain prim- 
itive in his musical abilities, if indeed he ever discovered that 
he was possessed of them. The inference from these ab- 
surd suppositions is plain. Training comes into the lite 
of every child of normal estate to modify here, to encourage 
there- to give a measure of control here, to suggest greater 
and higher possibilities there. It also may equally act 
wholly to distort and debase heredity and instincts and make 
a person a reproach unto himself. The only difference after 
all between the good citizen and the bad, or between the 
good sportsman and the bad, presuming that hereditary 
forces are relatively similar, is a difference m training, a 
difference in development, a difference in habits and atti- 
tudes Herein Ues the distinction between learned and un- 
learned behavior. The latter makes all children more or 
less alike; the former makes them more or less different. 

Let us now ask ourselves the question, in what way is it 
possible for original nature to be thus modified by external 
forces? How can training and environment, the two sides 
of the triangle of fife, operate to evolve different sorts of in- 
dividuals upon the same base line, heredity? The answer 
to this question is to be sought in a discussion of the nature 
of the plasticity of the human organism. 

Plasticity. Lying at the roots of all this possibility ot 
development through learned behavior is a strange and 
interesting condition which may be given the name ot 
'plasticity. You know well enough from your experience at 



202 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

bread-making that the mass of dough yields to pressure 
exerted upon any part of it, and that it is quite easy to make 
from the same mass either biscuits or buns or rolls, or perhaps 
cakes, pies, or doughnuts, depending not at all so far as form 
or shape is concerned upon the ingredients, but rather upon 
the nature of the pressure exerted from the outside upon the 
mass. In a sense it is this same modifiability of the or- 
ganism of the child which makes training and growth possi- 
ble. We have in a previous lesson referred to the neurone 
as the unit of the nervous system; we are now to add to our 
knowledge concerning neurones that they are capable of 
profound modification as a resultant of the external stimuli 
which are exerted upon them. Some of them are far more 
responsive to these environmental agencies than are others 
You learned, for example, that those nerve centers control- 
ling the vital functions of the organism, like breathing, the 
circulation, digestive processes, and the purely functional 
responses, are very little subject to modification. The ap- 
propriate nervous connections are inborn, and no amount 
of effort can succeed in varying them to any appreciable 
degree. But of the nerve centers and nerve pathways which 
are concerned with all the higher forms of behavior, that is 
with such behavior as is initiated by experience and train- 
mg the same thmg may not be said. Here there are very 
wide ranges of variabiUty and modifiability dependent 
wholly upon the nature of the stimuli which pour in from 

h^h.-r -K, .■" f^^\^.^"g^«^ variabihty which makes 
habit possible; It is also this same range of variability which 
we have termed plasticity. 

Plasticity of animal organisms lower than man. It mav 
be given as a general truth that the lower in the scale the 
organism the less its range of variability, or plasticity. It 
follows as a corollary from this that man's organism is the 
most plastic of all animal organisms, since mfn ^pr ents 
the highest complexity of living creatures. Let us first 
however, note the relatively slight plasticity in the lower 
animals. In the case of the insects, for example, there is 



HABIT 203 

almost no plasticity. The insect lives its life exactly as the 
original nature of its organism predetermines that it shall 
live. It eats always the same sort of food, rears its young 
in the same unchanging fashion, follows blindly its simple, 
instinctive, or tropic inner compulsions, and is no more in- 
telligent when it dies than it was a week after its birth. Its 
way of living is invariable and fixed. So in large measure 
with the other lower organisms, including the worms and 
the fishes. In animals higher in the scale the modifiabihty 
is sKghtly greater, but only very slightly. The frog, for 
example, cannot exist long out of his native water; the bird 
builds its nest always in the same way; and migrates al- 
ways at the same season; the chick pecks at the worm and 
the grain of corn, drinks water from the basin, scratches in 
the gravel and repeats the life history of the flock always in 
the same invariably prosaic way; the domestic animals come 
to possess a certain amount of intelligence, yet never enough 
to cause an iota of change in their habits ; the duck seeks ever 
the same pond or lake wherein to disport herself; in the 
same way the wild animals of the forest and jungle rarely 
differ in any respect from one another in their manner of 
living, food-getting, and rearing their young. The blind 
instinct impels; environment contributes nothing to their 
lives save the opportunity to satisfy their instincts of self- 
preservation and perpetuation. 

Plasticity in man. It is in man that the modifiabihty of 
the tissues is greatest, and it is in the age of childhood that 
this plasticity reaches its highest point. You have seen 
evidences of it in young children who have learned to walk 
too early, with the result that their legs are sometimes 
ludicrously bowed. The reason for this lies in the greater 
softness of the bony tissue and hence the relative ease with 
which it is bent into unnatural positions. Round-shoul- 
deredness, too, is often the result of improper posture dur- 
ing the period of childhood and youth. Not infrequently 
you find among children some whose shoulders are thus 
stooped. Here again the cause is the same: the relative 



204 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

ease with which the bony structures of the body are modi- 
fied into varying shapes. We have referred in a previous 
lesson to the well-known custom among Chinese mothers of 
the near past of binding the feet of their infants in order 
that in adult womanhood they might have tiny, unobtrusive 
feet. The plasticity of the bones in infancy is such that the 
normal growth impulse may easily be thus modified, and 
the Chinese mothers were well aware of the necessity of ap- 
plying the bandages in earliest infancy in order to take full- 
est advantage of nature's plasticity. 

Another interesting evidence of the greater plasticity of 
children is to be found in the readiness with which such 
skills as foreign language pronunciation, piano-playing, vio- 
lin-playing, writing, etc., are acquired in childhood as con- 
trasted with the relative difiiculty of acquiring them in later 
life. It has been within your observation doubtless that 
the tendency now is to introduce the study of foreign lan- 
guages, such as French or Spanish or German, much earlier 
in the school course than was the practice formerly. The 
reason for this is, obviously, that because of the greater 
flexibility of the vocal organs unaccustomed sounds found 
in the pronunciation of a foreign language can be far more 
satisfactorily produced in early life than would be true if one 
attempted to master them at twenty. Not infrequently it 
happens in the case of older students that the reproduction 
of unusual sounds, as for instance the French u, can never 
be acquired satisfactorily. So with the learning to play 
a musical instrument; the time for practice is in child- 
hood, when the fingers and hands are still plastic and capa- 
ble of being trained. Fancy if you can a man thirty years 
of age, who had never learned to play, beginning to take 
lessons on the vioHn! In writing, too, the illiterate adult 
who has come up through his early years without having 
learned this art will find himself confronted with a dif- 
ficult task when he sits down at forty to learn to write his 
name! The same thing is true of the woman who sets out to 
learn the latest dancing steps, although she has never before 



HABIT 205 

danced even the Virginia Reel. Thus we might continue 
'M,o enumerate other forms of artistic accomphshments or of 
f skills requiring a high degree of training: the conclusion 
would be invariably that, while practice begun in mature \ 
life would undoubtedly increase one's skill, it would never- 
theless be also true that in the case of all forms of work or 
play requiring fine muscular adjustment and control an 
earlier period of apprenticeship would to a great degree de- 
termine the amount of skill attainable. 

Man's eternal supremacy over the animals. Herein, too, 
lies the eternal superiority of man over the lower animals. 
The original instincts in the latter dominate the whole life 
of the organism, change relatively little, and are capable of 
very little training or modification in the course of a life- 
time. In man the opposite is true. Suppose, for example, 
the horse breaks his leg: there is no help for him. He has 
not the intelligence to allow the splints to be attached and 
the bone set; he cannot adjust himself to walking on three 
legs and favoring the injured one. He must be shot. What 
happens in the case of the human being who breaks a limb.? 
His intelligence enables him to adapt his way of living for 
a season to the circumstance and in due time he recovers 
complete use of the limb. Think, too, of the man who loses 
a limb entirely. Forthwith he adapts himself to an arti- 
ficial limb and learns to walk without particular difiiculty, 
often without the support of a cane. In a similar way, if a 
man loses his right hand he immediately learns to use his 
left for writing and for other purposes in which he formerly / 
was accustomed to rely upon his missing member. Again, 
if a human being loses his eyesight, his hearing and other 
senses are sharpened to compensate for his loss and he is 
able to live fairly comfortably, relying upon the latter to 
inform him of his surroundings. Can you think of other 
illustrations of this compensating power of the senses, or of 
this wide range of ability of the human being to adjust him- 
self to changes in his environment.'^ So in the matter of 
food, clothing, shelter, and all the other necessities of life: 



206 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

if one source fails, the race of men does not become extinct; 
for immediately, owing to his plasticity, man is able t^ 
change completely his manner of living. Do you remembei 
Mr. JVIicawber, the inimitable optimist in David Copper- 
field, who was " always ready for anything which might turn 
up," and incidentally always expecting and waiting for 
something to turn up? IVIr. Micawber illustrates pretty 
well the value to the human being of this inherent plasticity / 1 
which can adjust itself to anything that may chance to 
"turn up." 

Plasticity and chUdhood. We have already made the 
statement that it is in childhood that the possibilities of 
adjustment to circumstances are at their height, so far as 
the physical capacities are concerned. It should also be 
said that the whole nervous system of the child is in a far 
less fixed and static condition than is the case with the adult 
nervous system. The neurons possess almost limitless pos- 
sibilities of connection at this time in life, and hence the 
mental side of life in childhood is likewise plastic. It is 
this modifiability or plasticity of the nervous system that 
lies at the basis of habit formation. Just as the physical 
body of the child was seen to be capable of a great variety 
of adjustments to the forces of the environment, so the 
mental and moral life will be seen to be likewise rather 
easily modifiable. In other words, childhood is the time of 
life in which habits are formed that will continue more or 
less constant and unvarying throughout the whole future 
life of the individual. In our next lesson we shall discuss 
the nature of this important force in all of us. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Cite as many instances as possible of the relatively slight plasticity of 
animals. 

2. Report upon any deformities of bony tissue which you may have 
chanced to note in children. 



HABIT 207 



THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Why are adjustable seats and desks indispensable in the schools if the 
natural physical plasticity of children is not to be done violence to? 

2. Can you think of any argument for the introduction of moral instruc- 
tion into the schools? 

3. Very widespread efforts are being made at the present time to provide 
vital instruction in good citizenship in the lower schools. From the 
standpoint of neural plasticity, why is such a provision a wise one? 

4. Why are children of foreign birth — and to some extent of native birth 
but foreign parentage — likely to have poor powers of linguistic 
expression? 

5. Since children's minds are in a plastic condition they are able to learn 
new data with relative ease. Obviously, this plasticity is a valuable 
ally to pedagogy. It is also true, however, that wrong data can be 
assimilated just as readily as correct. What educational principles of 
prime significance can you extract from this condition of neural 
plasticity? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Genetic Psychology, pp. 111-19. 

2. Washburn, M. F. The Animal Mind, chap. 10. 



LESSON 30 

HABIT {continued) 

What to look for in the observation 'period: 

1. Any good or bad habits or attitudes observable among the 
children. For example, speech habits, habits of personal 
hygiene, attitudes of truthfulness or deceitfulness, alertness 
or torpor, etc., etc. Note any degree of variations in any 
given habits from grade to grade. 

2. To what extent the teacher appears to realize one of her im- 
portant functions to be the encouraging of good habits and 
the discouraging of undesirable ones in her children. 

The strength of our habits. You are familiar, no doubt, 
with many of the popular sayings concerning the nature and 
strength of our habits. Among them are such statements 
as these: "Habit is a cable which we cannot break"; "we 
are creatures of habit"; "we are bundles of habit"; "habit 
is second nature"; "habit is ten times nature"; "life is 
three quarters habit"; etc., all of which indicate roughly 
the importance of habit in our lives. If you for any reason 
doubt the accuracy of these and other axioms bearing upon 
the power of habit, you have but to observe closely your 
own actions at any time and in any given situation and com- 
pare them with your behavior at any other time in the same 
situation. Take, for example, the matter of your habits of 
gait. You always walk in approximately the same way 
and at the same rate of speed. Perhaps you even walk 
habitually on one particular side of the street in preference 
to the other side, although it would be impossible for you to 
tell why. You have likewise observed in your friend char- 
acteristic peculiarities of gait, and could doubtless recognize 
her approaching even before she was near enough to enable 
you to see her features clearly: there was something dis- 
tinctive about her walk. Or again consider the matter 



HABIT 209 

of handwriting. It is as hard for you to write any differ- 
ently from your way as it is to walk differently. And how 
readily you recognize the handwriting of your friend on the 
envelope even before you have opened the letter; there is 
likewise something distinctive about her writing. And 
habits of speech! How many, many times during the day 
you are guilty of the same grammatical error which is your 
besetting grammatical sin. You are conscious of the in- 
correctness or vulgarity of your speech, and do your best 
to make it purer, and yet often without apparent success. 
It is likely that you have a favorite ejaculatory expression 
which springs to your lips whenever you are surprised or 
angered. The quality of your voice, its pitch and tone, 
your care or carelessness in enunciating your words, the 
rapidity or slowness of your speech, its characteristic 
easiness or jerkiness, — all these qualities of your everyday 
speaking are entirely habitual, and you can no more change 
them than you can hope to change any of your other fast- 
formed habits. 

It would be idle to attempt to enumerate all the peculiari- 
ties and idiosyncrasies of behavior which differentiate every 
one of us from every one else; no two are wholly alike in the 
matter of their habits. There are, for example, our food 
habits and our food-taking habits, table manners, amuse- 
ment habits, habits of politeness and chivalry and deference, 
our habits of personal hygiene, toilet, bathing, etc., habits 
of combing and arranging our hair, of posture in sitting or 
standing, of tastes and preferences, etc., which are quite 
distinctive for every one of us. Even in dressing in the 
morning, you are doubtless little more than automatons, in 
that you invariably follow the same procedure, order, and 
style. In short, if you press this interesting inquiry further, 
you will find that there are few things indeed which you ever 
perform a second or a third or a tenth or a hundredth or 
thousandth and perhaps millionth time that are not per- 
formed almost exactly as they were at the very first. 

Even our attitudes of attentiveness and inattentiveness. 



210 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

of inquisitiveness, of perseverance, of toleration or bigotry 
ot political or religious conviction, of thrift or of extrava- 
gance, of guilelessness or deceitfulness, of open-mindedness ' 
or narrow-mindedness, of easy conviction or of critical 
judgment of suspicion or of naivete, are all in themselves 
the logical and unescapable outcome of habitual ways of 
thinking or acting. 

The physiological basis of habit. We pointed out in the ^ 
last lesson that it is the nervous system which is responsible 
for all possible modifications of behavior resulting in habit 
Ihe origmal condition of the neurones is such that, once ' 
one pathway through them is linked up, that same path- I 
way tends ever afterward to be linked up whenever the same ^ 
stimulus IS applied. This tendency of nervous units to I 
maintam former connections may be termed the physiolog- 
ical basis of habit. Let us illustrate the matter in this way. ' 
Suppose by dmt of much encouragement on the part of the /I 
mother and much grotesque effort on its own part the six- I 
months-old infant one day responds to vigorous invitation J 
by saying mamma!" for the first time. Immediately it ' 
IS showered with kisses on the part of the parent and its 
linguistic attainments exploited before the father and the 
neighbors, with the result that the infant takes a certain 
amount of conscious pride in its abilities, and perhaps soon 
rewards its enthusiastic teachers by saying "papa'" or 
more Hkely, "dada!" "Behold!" exclaim the parents,* "the 
baby can talk! " Of course the baby cannot talk yet ; many 
painful efforts and much childish prattle must intervene 
before it can really talk as a six-year-old talks. But the 
ability to talk is begun. Deep in the nervous system of 
the child the neurones have been partially linked together 
and from day to day others of them will be similarly linked' 
Ihe ultimate and characteristic speech habits are being 
acquired. ° ( 

So with any other future habits of the child. The begin- 
nings are crude and faulty, but they are beginnings, and 
subsequent repetitions of the same responses will ultimately 



h 



HABIT 211 

polish and round them off into fast habits. From the point 
of view of the nervous system, then, habit is the result of 
repetition of any given response. The nature of the nerv- 
ous pathways is such that once any one of them has been 
traversed by stimulus and response, future passage of like 
stimuli to like responses is made with less friction. Prac- 
tically speaking, those of our habits which are most deeply 
rooted are those which have been repeated the greatest 
number of times; those which are lightly rooted are those 
which have been repeated but relatively few times. Some 
habits which we have, like those of speech, toilet, etc., are 
relatively unchangeable: we are their slaves for the most 
part, and we are because the nervous centers controlling 
them have functioned so invariably and long that, given the 
situation, instantly the response ensues. So much so, in- 
deed, that many of our habits are reduced to the level of our 
automatic and reflex acts which latter make up those re- 
sponses of the longest racial duration, just as our acquired 
habits comprise those which we as the latest product of our 
ancestral line have formed in addition to those fundamental 
ones which the race has handed down in us. Thus, the 
profane man may respond to a vexing situation with an 
oath, just as readily and reflexly as he may respond by draw- 
ing his hand away quickly from a hot surface upon which it 
chances to come in contact. The old saying that we are 
the slaves of habit may be seen thus to be quite justified. 
A nervous pathway that has been linked up ten times by the 
individual is nearly as much our master as one which has 
been linked up for untold ages in racial behavior. 

Habit and childhood. In the preceding lesson we took 
occasion to refer to childhood as the most plastic age. In- 
terpreted in the light of this present lesson, that statement 
means simply that, inasmuch as the neurones in childhood 
are free to be linked up in any order or sequence, childhood 
represents the greatest possibilities and opportunities in 
the matter of habit. "You cannot teach an old dog new 
tricks," another popular and relatively truthful axiom of 



212 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

life, implies the necessity of teaching the tricks during the 
time m which the dog is still young. In other words, child- 
hood IS the time for instiUing those habits and attitudes 
into human beings which will be fundamental to future 
health, happiness, and normal living. In this sense, every 
adult IS after all but a child grown up. True, many of his 
reactions are acquired as new situations confront him, and 
as new decisions have to be made; but beneath all his 'later 
acquired reactions are those which he learned at his mother's 
knee, or in the bosom of his "set," or under the gentle 
formative influence of his school days. In the fundamen- 
tals, you yourself are little different from what you were at' 
sixteen, and at sixteen you were little different from what 
you were at ten. No matter how many and varied may be 
the later neurone connections, the primary ones are but 
strengthened with time. There is no truer saying than this : 
'Just as the twig is bent, the tree is inclined." It may be 
that in childhood play you chanced some happy day in 
the forest to tie a knot in a young, slender sapling, prompted 
it may be by curiosity to see what would happen in the 
growth of the young tree. Ten, twenty, fifty years after- 
ward, if the tree was still living and you were to stray again 
in the same forest of yore you would find that the knot was 
still there where you had tied it, and that the mighty tree 
had not been able to outgrow the mutilation which it suf- 
fered at your hand many years before. As you bent it . 
while it was yet a sapling, so it was inchned as a mighty 
tree. Apply the metaphor and you have one of the great- ^ 
est truths of human life and human nature. 

Good and bad habits. One often hears it said that Mr. 
bo-and-So has the smoking habit, or the drinking habit or 
the swearing habit, but less often does one hear of the 
non-smoking habit, or of the non-drinking or non-swearing 
habits. It should be remembered, however, that habits 
are just as often good as bad — perhaps oftener. Apply * 
to the natural plasticity of the child's nature the forces 
and formative influences of a poor or vicious environment 



HABIT 213 

within the limits set by heredity, and you will inevitably 
produce a vicious adult; apply to that same plasticity the 
formative influences of a beneficent environment, and you 
will inevitably produce a refined and respectable adult. 
Prune and cultivate wisely the sapling and you will be re- 
warded with a stately and profitable tree; neglect it or mu- 
tilate it and you will be rewarded with a gnarled and worth- 
less abortion such as nature never intended. 

The breaking of habits. For the same reason that habits 
are easily formed in early life they are likewise easily broken 
at that period. The plasticity of the nervous system is such 
that, while generally speaking the more times a given re- 
sponse is made the more likely it will always be made when 
the situation calling it forth arises, repetitions made in 
childhood count relatively less than when made subse- 
quently. In other words, the younger the organism the 
more readily nervous connections, once made, can be set 
aside and others substituted in their place. It is this fact 
which makes it possible for those whose earliest years have 
been passed in unfortunate or positively vicious surround- 
ings to make themselves over, as it were, in later childhood 
and grow up into most desirable citizens. The good re- 
form school, for example, rescues boys and girls from bad 
influences, and endeavors to make wise and beneficent sub- 
stitutions of desirable for undesirable responses. On the 
other hand, there is relatively little hope for the child who 
continues in his evil environment throughout youth. Thus, 
Oliver Twist could be rescued from the sordid, criminal 
surroundings of Fagin and his tribe, but for Fagin himself, 
or for Daniel Quilp, Dickens could imagine but one end 
and one outcome. Witness, for example, the unsuccessful 
efforts of the inveterate smoker to break his habit, even 
though he himself despises it and makes sincere effort to 
do so. So with speech habits. The child may grow up in 
a home where no heed whatsoever is paid to good English, 
but when that same boy or girl goes away to high school it is 
relatively easy to fall away from the slaclcness or careless- 



214 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

ness of his home. For older people, however, such reform 
in speech habits is always a painful and often impossible 
undertaking. 

In a sense every one who is progressing in any art, or skill, 
or craftsmanship is continually breaking his former habits 
by acquiring "short-cut " methods and improved technique, 
thus constantly evolving from one cruder reaction orig- 
inally mastered a series of more finished and economical 
responses. This may be well illustrated in the growth of 
a child's speech. The earlier "baby talk" is but the rough, 
unpolished habit-material upon which the child subse- 
quently works and experiments in the evolution of later 
finished vocalizations. Early habits of speed, articulation, 
breathing, modulation, rhythm, and other speech peculi- 
arities are slowly and laboriously transformed with prac- 
tice into whatever gracefulness of speech the adult may pos- 
sess. Can you suggest other illustrations from your own 
experience which indicate this need of any habit to perfect 
itself so long as the individual is to be progressive? 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Make a list of ten habits which you have. Try to estimate how old 
each one of them is. 

2. Determine upon some habit which you would like either to form or to 
break. Keep a diary of your progress for several weeks, if possible 
imtil you have succeeded in your attempt. 

S. Observe an infant for several minutes, and determine some of its 
habits which you can see are being formed. Report the result of your 
observation in class. 

4. Are you aware that you are progressively forming more exact or im- 
proved habits out of former less perfect ones? Explain. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Why is a large part of the time in most schools devoted to language, 
composition, spelling, writing, and dictation, and such other arts as 
bear upon the general topic of language work? 

2. In how far should a proper function of the school be the fostering in 
boys and girls of wise habits or attitudes of thrift, open-mindedness, 
honesty, politeness, etc.? 

3. Grade the following subjects of study on a scale of 100, according to 



HABIT 215 

whether they are primarily (a) habit-inducing, or (b) informative sub- 
jects: hygiene; arithmetic; grammar; composition; history; geography; 
nature; drawing; manual training; vocal music; reading. 

4. Vi'hat is the real value of drill in such subjects as \\Titing, arithmetic, 
language? 

5. Which agent is the more responsible for the correctness of a child's 
habits: the home or the school? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, pp. 66-79, 

2. Betts, G. H. The Mind and its Education, chap. 5. 



LESSON 31 

HABIT (continued) 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Evidences that nurture has done little in some respects to 
modify original nature in the children. 

2. Whether some habits in evidence are more firmly rooted than 
others. If so, which appear to be relatively fixed? Which 
lightly rooted.'' 

3. In how far the chief aim of the lesson is the fostering of val- 
uable habits and attitudes in the children. 

Habits based in instincts. Were it at all conceivable that 
a child possessed no instinctive tendencies, it would neces- 
sarily follow that that child would never be able to formu- 
late any habitual forms of response, for it would have no 
original capacities upon which to build them. The orig- 
inal endoT\Tnent of instinctive tendencies makes up, in 
other words, the elements out of which later acquired ten- 
dencies, or habits, are fashioned. Nature provides the 
inherent capacities and possibilities which nurture trans- 
forms into characters and skills and attitudes. In every 
generation of every age this genetic endowment of the 
racial past is fashioned by circumstance into varying moulds 
which we call habits. It follows, therefore, that at the 
root of every acquired form of behavior which the child of 
the race manifests there is at least one instinct, and more 
likely several. The instinct we may call the necessity of 
the race; its derived habit we may call the necessity of the 
individual. The race wisely leaves its mass of endowment 
plastic, and therefore subject to educability. In this 
chapter we are to strive to see how nurture succeeds in 
moulding nature according to the customs or the attitudes of 
the times. 

Imitation and habits. You may recall that when we were 



HABIT 217 

discussing the various kinds of instincts, we included imita- 
tion in a somewhat Umited way, but made the statement 
that imitated behavior was more properly an acquired than 
an innate response. (See Lesson 18.) It is necessary at 
this point to justify this conclusion. This we can very 
easily do by pointing to several of the more common types 
of imitated activity. For example, take the speech of the 
child. From the first crude babblings which we termed 
vocalization, through the early sounding of "mamma," 
and "dada," through the many months and years of "baby 
talk," the speech of an individual is ultimately developed. 
During all this time there has been in evidence no general 
tendency to imitate, as for instance there has been to 
vocalize or manipulate. Rather, ability to use speech has 
developed very slowly, and as a result of practice. The more 
or less unconscious imitation of the speech of others is there- 
fore the result of previous imitation, which was in turn ini- 
tiated by the innate tendency to produce vocal sounds. The 
whole process, beyond the infantile vocalization, was not 
an original tendency to respond to language heard by dupli- 
cating it; rather it was an acquired tendency to continue the 
progress previously made. The same might be said of any 
other acquired art which has been perfected by imitation. 
"The child imitates his fellows in all sorts of ways because 
satisfaction has been derived from such action, not because 
he cannot help it," as Norsworthy and Whitley remark. 
Witness, as another example, the delight with which the 
boy sets to work to practice some sleight-of-hand perform- 
ance, which he has chanced to behold. His method is imi- 
tation, but his motive is rather the satisfaction which his 
skill will net him in the ability to perform before his chum 
than it is an innate impulse to imitate. So with the reli- 
gious habits which come about as the result of social imita- 
tion of the parents. There is no inner necessity to embrace 
one's creed because one's parents^ embrace it; rather one is 
trained in these habits by the imitative influence of the 
parents. So v/ith habits of dress, political affihation, trade 



218 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

preferences, and even smoking and drinking: the tendency 
to imitate is not innate, but rather the result of either 
training or the conscious forecasting of the satisfaction 
which will result from imitation. 

How does nurture modify nature? We said a moment 
ago that we were to be concerned in this lesson with the 
problem as to how the forces of the environment make it 
possible for all of us to control our own destinies, at least to 
a certain extent. Or in other words, in what sense is it 
true that nurture is able to modify nature, nurture being 
understood to mean environment and nature to mean in- 
stinctive tendency.? Let us take as our first illustration 
the matter of table manners, or, more properly speaking, 
table habits. You may have been much embarrassed on 
some occasion when guests were present to note your small 
brother's eagerness to take a larger portion upon his plate 
than was either polite or safe, considering the available food 
and the number to be supplied. Or again, you may have 
observed that the same small brother had no hesitancy in 
taking the last muffin from the plate, or the largest piece of 
cake, or the reddest peach, as though his values were always 
superlatives, as indeed they usually are. But why did your 
small brother's behavior cause you concern? Sm-ely for 
no other reason than that it indicated to the guests lack of 
proper training in table manners on the part of the child. 
Your embarrassment to some extent reflected back upon 
yourself and all the other adult members of your family 
who had obviously been negligent in the matter of training 
the child properly. 

But now look at the situation from the point of view of 
the boy. Why did he fill his plate to overflowing, and why 
did he select the choicest of everything available for him- 
self.'' Merely because his instincts were still in their original 
condition. Food was necessary to his sustenance; here was 
food. Instinct bade him seize and appropriate sufficient 
for his wants. Better take too much than not enough. 
According to nature, satisfaction comes only when there 



HABIT 219 

is enough. And so, responding naturally and spontaneously 
to his instincts to get food, the young child proceeded to do 
so. Were it not for the fact that we adults are trained to 
control this particular instinct we should all behave at the 
table in much the same way as does the child. But by 
dint of careful instruction we have acquired the habits of 
politeness at table, which fact constrains us to appear to be 
content with a meager portion and to refrain from serving 
ourselves with the last roll or the largest piece of cake. The 
child's nature is still in that unmodified original state which 
you have often observed in the food habits of swine, or 
chicks, or any other lower animal: there is no thought for 
others; satisfaction of self is the only satisfaction sought. 

As another illustration of the force of original nature be- 
fore and apart from training, witness the selfishness and 
thoughtlessness of the play instinct in its earlier expression. 
The very young child, for example, tends often to rebel 
against sharing his toys with other children; he would rather 
keep his sweets in his own pocket to enjoy secretly by him- 
self than to divide them among his companions; in the 
game or contest he covets for himself the first place or the 
favored position; he tends rather to play unfairly than 
fairly at the point in the game when the crisis is imminent; 
his attitudes toward right and fair play are still unformed. 
But he does not participate in the play of his fellows very 
long before he begins to modify the promptings of his orig- 
inal nature into more or less proper habits. He is taught to 
share toys and sweets with his brothers and sisters, and even 
with playmates outside his own family circle; the social- 
izing influences of his play, to which we have already re- 
ferred, slowly combat the earlier unsocial attitudes and he 
comes to develop an elementary code of play-ethics and 
standards which form the nucleus of later habits and atti- 
tudes of fairness, constraint, and self-control. Nature would 
have him a selfish, anti-social, thoughtless child, and there- 
fore an adult of like characteristics; nurture would tend to 
make him an altruistic, social, thoughtful being whose in- 



220 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIMAL SCHOOLS 

dividuality was merged in the welfare and happiness and 
will of the group. 

Other habits resulting from modifying instincts. Let 
us in the light of what we have just said reexamine some 
of the instinctive tendencies which we have aheady studied 
for the purpose of determining what habits are based in 
them. From the instinct of curiosity, for example, are 
derived habits and attitudes of investigativeness, indus- 
triousness, and the taste for experimentation. From the 
instinct of ownership and collecting are derived habits of 
thrift, economy, close application, and many of the associ- 
ated responses which incite all of us to accumulate a com- 
petence and to establish homes of our own. From the in- 
stincts of rivalry and emulation arise also our habits of 
industry, patience, and indefatigable expenditure of en- 
ergy. From the gregarious instincts come our attitudes 
and habits of forbearance, courtesy, self-abnegation, al- 
truism, good-fellowship, etc. Out of the maternal instinct 
the habits of family and home evolve. Even the fighting 
instinct has much to contribute to the positive side of life 
in the way of attitutes of honor, and attitudes toward the 
right and the just and the wholesome in life and its rela- 
tionships. By an easy sublimation the fighting response is 
transferred to the habits of being always found on the firing- 
line of good citizenship, standing always for the right and 
willing to sacrifice and fight for the right. From the in- 
stinct which prompts the child to seek approval and to dis- 
play his abihties and possessions before others, come those 
important attitudes of later life which make us abide by 
the dictates of custom, obey and uphold the laws which 
govern society, and direct our lives in conformity with the 
ideas and ideals of the times. Can you add to this list of 
habits which are formulated from the original instincts of 
childhood? 

The inevitableness of habit. In a former chapter we spoke 
of the inevitableness of heredity. It is fitting here to refer 
also to the inevitableness of habit. In the former case, the 



HABIT 221 

contribution of racial ancestry to the individual was unes- 
capable; in the latter the contribution of his every act to 
the habits and attitudes of the individual is likewise unes- 
capable. Physiologically speaking, as we said, there can 
be no passage of nervous energy across a nervous pathway 
without some modification of that pathway which makes it 
the more certain to conduct a similar current in the future 
when the conditions which originally called it forth are 
right. Every time we delay in making a judgment, or in 
putting a plan decided upon into execution, or in making a 
decision, we are probably rendering future celerity in these 
acts of will less possible. Every time we employ an inele- 
gant expression, or fail to observe some proper courtesy, 
or follow the line of least resistance as against a line of action 
which we know well is the proper one, we are initiating or 
intensifying habits and attitudes just as inevitably as when 
we employ the elegant expression, or observe the fitting 
courtesy, or execute our best judgment. There can be no 
half-way course in the matter of habits; every response is 
recorded in the nervous system. It is therefore of the greatest 
importance that the original habits which children form 
shall be wise and proper rather than the reverse. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Look up a good discussion of "conditioned reflexes," and endeavor 
to relate the information thus gained to the formation of habits. 

2. Refer to the hst of ten habits which you prepared for Lesson 30, and 
endeavor to discover from what instincts each is an outgrowth. 

3. In the case of a habit which you are striving to form or break, what 
instincts are opposing your efforts, if any? 

4. Study James's laAvs of habit formation. 

5. Distinguish between habits and ideas. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. One of Rousseau's chief contentions was to the efiFect that children 
should be brought up in a state of nature, and quite separated from 
other children during their earlier years. From the viewpoint of 
this lesson what is an insuperable objection to such a plan of educa- 
tion? 



222 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

2. How does the socialized school provide exceptional opportunity for 
the favorable influence of nurture upon nature in the promoting of 
desirable social habits? 

5. What are some fundamental habits which the child who has come 
up through our public schools should have formed, to a considerable 
degree at least because of the schoolroom influence? 

4. In how far does the learning process in children depend upon imita- 
tion? How does the degree of imitativeness diminish or increase from 
grade to grade as the child passes upward? Does it vary in different 
subjects of study? 

6. What procedure might you follow in helping a child to overcome an 
undesirable habit, such for example as tardiness, untruthfulness, etc? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Studies in Psychology, chap. 1. 

2. Rowe, S. H. Habit-Formation and the Science of Teaching, chap. 7. 



LESSON 32 
SENSATION 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Evidences among the children of defective sense organs, 
especially of eyes and ears. 

2. If a lower or kindergarten grade is being observed, do you 
find the teacher making use of any special games or devices 
designed to sharpen the senses of the children? 

3. Evidences of individual differences in acuity of the sense 
organs which appear to affect the school work of any of the 
children. 

Definition of the term. You are accustomed no doubt to 
employ the word "sensation" in a somewhat loose way in 
your everyday speech to indicate an unusual spectacle, or 
something bizarre and fantastic. One often hears it said, 
for instance, that the lecture, or the speech, or the novel, or 
the dress of an individual, etc., created a sensation. In a 
psychological discussion of the term, however, we must 
give it a far more restricted and definite signification than 
this. We may define a sensation in the proper sense of the 
word as being the immediate result of the stimulating of a 
sense organ. We cannot say that it is the ultimate, or medi- 
ate result of such stimulation, for all of the higher thought 
processes are ultimately based upon original stimulations 
of sense organs; we can only say that it is the immediate 
and simplest result of sense impression. 

Now you have been accustomed to understand that there 
are five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. 
In order to be strictly accurate, however, it will be neces- 
sary to further subdivide and extend this number to seven. 
Touch, besides, is divisible into three distinct types of 
sensation: temperature (i.e., hot or cold), touch proper, and 
surface pain. In addition to the original five senses, as 
you are familiar with them, we must include in this discus- 



224 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

sion two others — organic and kinsesthetic, or muscular. 
By kinsesthetic, or muscular, we understand those sensa- 
tions resulting from muscular balance, strain, coordination, 
etc., such, for example, as the sensations which come to you 
in descending in an elevator, or which result from long con- 
tinued use of the right hand in writing. By the former or 
organic sensations, we understand those sensations which 
come from the internal organs of the body, as, for example, 
in such organic illnesses as indigestion, toothache, etc. 

Complete list of sensations. The complete Hst of all 
possible sensations which may on occasion pour in upon us 
from the outside would, therefore, be as follows: 

(1) Visual. 

(2) Auditory. 

(3) Gustatory. 

(4) Olfactory. 

(5) Tactile. 

(6) Organic. 

(7) Kinsesthetic (or muscular). 

All possible information from the outside or inner world 
can come to us only through these seven doorways. Of 
them, you will probably agree that sight is the most indis- 
pensable, although life without any one of them is de- 
cidedly a life of limitation. If you can fancy a child born 
without any of the first five in the list, you can conceive for 
his maturity no knowledge, no ability, nothing save com- 
plete and total mental oblivion. You probably know one 
or more persons who are either blind or deaf, or both, and 
whose condition inspires sympathy and commiseration on 
your part. In this lesson we are to study the evolution of 
each of these senses in the child. 

Nerve pathway of any sensation. We said above that 
the sense organ represents the only doorway into the brain, 
and therefore into the intelligence of the individual. But 
the sense organ itself is only the doorway. After a stimulus 
has passed across the end organ (which is another name for 
a sense organ) it travels along the sensory pathway, just as 



SENSATION 225 

we found to be true in the case of reflex action, until it ar- 
rives within the central nervous system, where it links up 
with the traces left there of previous sensations of its kind 
and adds one other fact of information about the world 
outside. But the instant such addition has been made, the 
impulse can no longer be termed a sensation; it is rather now 
a perception, about which we shall study in the next lesson. 
In other words, the moment associations are aroused, a stimu- 
lus ceases to he a sensation and passes over into a percept. 
From this it follows that only the first experiences, or the 
early experiences, of an individual may be termed sensa- 
tions in the strict sense. It likewise follows that childhood 
is the age in which our sensations are purest, because less 
modified by the experience which comes with added stimuli. 
By way of illustration we might take the following. Sup- 
pose some one were to hold up suddenly before you a red and 
green striped rubber ball. If you could take a snapshot, 
as it were, of your primary reactions there would probably 
be included in the result certain sensations of redness and 
greenness. Almost simultaneously with these responses, 
however, you would have perceptions of redness and green- 
ness and roundness, etc., which would be called into your 
mind by former experiences with the colors or shapes con- 
cerned. In other words, it is difficult to say exactly when 
a sensation ceases to be a sensation and becomes a percep- 
tion. Nor are we especially interested to discover the exact 
border-line between the two processes. It is well to under- 
stand, however, that a sensation exists in its pure state for 
but a brief period, after which it is closely allied with the 
perceptive processes. An illustration of the importance of 
sensation in our lives may be seen in the following situa- 
tions. The myriads of color of the autumn leaves, the 
beauty and fragrance of the orchard in springtime, the 
vast, rolling expanse of the ocean and the sweeping lines of 
the seashore, the crimson sunset, and the first faint flushes 
of dawn — all these are but a part of the numberless sensa- 
tions which make their appeal to us constantly, and fill life 



226 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

with much of the beautiful and the majestic and the artistic 
which make it the more worth hving. 

Earliest sensations of infancy. We said above that there 
are seven different doorways into the mind of the child. Let 
us now endeavor to understand how it is that those several 
doorways are pushed ajar and afterward opened wide to 
the inpouring of sensations. First, the sense of sight. In 
the earliest days of infancy there is very little sensitiveness 
to light, although it is probable that from the very first day 
the infant is vaguely conscious of light stimuli. Extremely 
bright Ughts appear to cause it discomfort, and dazzling 
lights are probably actually painful to its weak eyes. Mild 
light causes general contentment and, from about the third 
week on, its eyes are attracted to bright surfaces, such as 
sunbeams on the floor, or the patch of reflection from the 
lamp upon the ceiling, or even the face of the mother. Con- 
trasts of brightness and darkness are likewise dimly appre- 
ciated from about this time. It appears from the studies 
which have been made of infants that any notice of color 
lags somewhat behind the inception of sensations of light 
proper. Miss Shinn's niece was attracted on the 23d day 
to a red kerchief which it appeared to watch with consid- 
erable delight. In general we may assume that sensations 
of light contribute little more than a vague feeling of satis- 
faction to the infant previous to the attainment of its third 
week of life. 

Hearing is probably absent altogether for the first two or 
three days, coming into some prominence only in response 
to sharp auditory shocks which are sufficiently loud to 
compel even the sluggish nerves of hearing to respond. 

The taste sense is rudimentary at birth. Various strong 
tasting substances have been placed in infants' mouths, 
such as camomile tea, cod-liver oil, soda mint, aromatic 
spirits of ammonia, etc., all of which are in most instances 
swallowed like so much water. Even a one per cent solu- 
tion of quinine, which adults find strongly bitter, fails to 
call forth any symptoms of unpleasantness in the infant. 



SENSATION 227 

who often takes a two per cent solution of the same sub- 
stance before making a single grimace. 

The sense of smell is one of the slowest to be evolved. 
Miss Shinn thinks that not until the tenth month of life 
does there begin to be any spontaneous activity of this 
sensation. Strong, odorous substances persistently ex- 
perimented with will usually provoke a distinct reaction 
of unpleasantness, or the reverse, but so far as actual spon- 
taneous exercise of the sense is concerned it appears that 
such exercise is rarely found in children during the first half 
year at least. 

Of the threefold aspect of the sense of touch, it may be 
said concerning the temperature sensations that variations 
in the temperature of the nursery are not noticed unless such 
variations be sharp: coldness is more quickly responded to 
than warmth; concerning the sensations of surface pain it 
appears that, while it is not easy to experiment upon in- 
fants, sensitivity to pain is extremely low during the first 
days of life. Slight surgical operations would indicate this 
to be true, as would also certain experiments which have 
been performed by enterprising inquirers such, for example, 
as Genzmer. This investigator actually used the needle- 
prick upon fifty babies and concluded that for a consider- 
able period after birth there was present no sensitivity to 
pain. It is possible, however, that more extensive stimuli, 
such as pinches and slapping that would stimulate a larger 
number of nerve endings would elicit manifestations of 
pain. The third aspect of the tactile sense, touch proper, 
evolves also somewhat slowly, except in the case of the 
areas contiguous to the mouth and eyes, which manifest 
sensitivity to touch from the very first. Upon other areas 
of the skin, however, the response is at best dull during the 
first few days, consisting largely in a vague "feeling of gen- 
eral comfort in being cuddled." 

Organic sensations in infancy are not easily determinable. 
It appears that sensations of thirst and hunger are present 
very early — perhaps after the second or third day. And 



228 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NOR^IAL SCHOOLS 

yet, strange to say, if a rubber nipple or other small object 
be introduced into the mouth of the infant who is appar- 
ently fretful because it is hungry, it forthwith manifests 
symptoms of satisfaction and contentment. Organic pain 
is likewise probably felt early. You have no doubt often re- 
marked when you were caring for the baby the distinctly 
different forms of crying in which it indulged: the hunger 
cry difl'ered from the indigestion or colic cry, and the latter 
from the fatigue cry. This would indicate somewhat distinct 
sensations from the internal organs. 

The kincesthetic sense, too, is in evidence from the first 
day or so. One investigator found a two-day-old boy 
starting distinctly when the scale of a balance in which he 
lay fell down quickly and with a jerk. Babies are usually 
rather sensitive to jarring and to being tossed aloft. They 
also become easily fatigued from lying long in one position, 
which fact w^ould seem to indicate the presence of muscular 
sensations from the back or shoulders or limbs. 

Developments from these crude beginnings. Out of 
these crude and uncertain beginnings all the keenness of 
eye and ear, and all the discriminations of taste and smell, 
and all the lightness and deftness of touch, and all the fine- 
ness of muscular coordination and balance are to be evolved ! 
It would seem that nature has a difficult task upon her 
hands. But no! Almost before even the mother knows it 
the child's senses are so sharpened that there is nothing 
objective in its entire surroundings, indoors or out, which 
does not have to be explored in order that its mysteries 
may be yielded up to the omnivorous senses of the young dis- 
coverer and adventurer in a world filled with innumerable 
things to challenge and entice. 

The child lives in a world of sensation. By the time the 
infant has reached his first birthday he can ordinarily toddle 
about by himself, and from that time on whatever of its 
secrets the world has not yet yielded up to him are speedily 
investigated. As infancy shades off into early childhood the 
entire atmosphere in which the child of nature lives, moves. 



SENSATION 229 

and has his being is one of ever widening sensation, coupled 
of course with growing perceptive keenness. And as early 
childhood passes over lightly into later childhood and with 
all the attendant sharpening of the senses, the charming 
search after new and ever new experience becomes more and 
more seducing. Think, if you will, of the flying swing and 
the whirling merry-go-round, and the bicycle-riding, and 
the search after new shells and new stones and new leaves, 
and the craze for pictures and stories of adventure, and the 
swaying in wind-tossed trees, and the craving for sweets and 
candies, and the delight in screeching whistles, and the im- 
pulse to handle and pull apart and build up and manipulate 
and a score more experiences of the senses which make 
the world of childhood the world that James has so aptly 
called a "great, blooming, buzzing confusion." All of these 
interests are satisfying to the child because they appeal to 
his thirst for sensation. It is as though nature knew that 
her child would be in need of a vast fund of sense experience 
upon which to build up his later thought processes, and took 
this easy and compelling way to lay such a foundation for 
future progress. Can you think of several other forms of 
sense experience which children willfully and spontaneously 
seek? 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Look up the technical names ordinarily applied by physiologists to 
the first five senses which we discussed. 

2. Observe an infant for a few moments in order to discover any facts 
concerning the operation of his sense organs. If he is but a few days 
old try some simple experiment upon his vision, or other sense; if an 
older baby, note his keenness of sense interpretation; if a still older 
child, try to observe something of the pleasure which he derives from 
the ordinary stimuli which pour in upon him through one sense or the 
other. Report your results in class. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. From the viewpoint of efficient sense organs, what is the value of a 
thoroughgoing system of school medical and health inspection? 

2. Is there any justification in the schoolroom for sj'stematic training 



230 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



^ 



of the senses, or ■will the evolution of sharp senses come about iri' 
directly through the play and other interests natural to childhood? 

3. Would you expect a child brought up in closest contact with an en- 
vironment rich in appeal to the senses to be capable of more intelli- 
gent participation in the educative process than another child of simi- 
lar native ability but brought up in an impoverished environment 
where sense appeal was shght? In general, should a city or a rural 
environment be the better place in which to rear children? 

4. Upon which of the senses is school work most dependent? Which 
is the sense most likely to be impaired? Is there any causative rela- 
tionship between application to school work and impairment of this 
sense? 

5. What precautions should be taken by a teacher to make it possible 
for the nearsighted or slightly deaf children to participate to the maxi- 
mum of their ability in the work of the school? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, chap. 5. 

2. Betts, G. H. The Mind and its Education, chap. 6. 

3. Shinn, M. W. Biography of a Baby, chaps. 3 and 5. 

4. Shinn, M. W. Notes on the Development of a Child, especially vol. 2. 
(To be used largely for reference purposes.) 



LESSON 33 
PERCEPTION 

What to looJcfor in the observation period: 

1. Evidences of the perceptual keenness or dullness of indi- 
vidual children. Are some more keen than others? Why? 
Is a child sometimes a keen perceiver in one situation, and 
quite the reverse in another? 

2. To what extent the teacher makes it possible for appeal to 
be made to more than one sense organ. Is there greater 
possibility in this respect in some subjects than in others? 
In what subjects are the possibilities greatest? Smallest? 
In what grades especially does the teacher emphasize this 
wider appeal? Why? 

Definition. We said in our last lesson that as soon as a 
sensation had succeeded in arousing meaning, or associa- 
tions, it ceased to be primarily a sensation and became a 
perception. It is true that even after you have recognized 
the red book to be a red book, its qualities of redness and 
size still continue to be present to your mind, but your 
m.ental experience is rather concerned with what the object 
is than w4th what its qualities are. A perception is there- 
fore the result of the unifying character of past experience 
brought to bear upon the present sensations. Your per- 
ception of any object is your answer to the question, " what 
is it?" You have, for example, a perception of the printed 
page before you, or of the picture hanging on the wall, or of 
the hissing radiator, or of the odor from the vase of flowers, 
or of the smooth velvet upon your dress, or of the friend 
studying by your side. All of these possess a meaning to 
you; all of them, too, are interpreted or understood as they 
are because of your past experience with them. 

Perceptive powers of the child. But these same objects 
would have a totally different meaning to the infant. They 
would fall upon his senses as a more or less discordant and 



232 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

indistinct series of stimuli which he would be quite at a loss 
to assign any meaning to. The infant's mental life is a 
jargon of seemingly unrelated and unintelligible events. 
He has not learned to bring mental order out of this sensory 
chaos. To him it is all James's "great, blooming, buzzing 
confusion," without significance and without purpose. He 
is living in a world of haphazard, topsy-turvy, upside-down 
feverishness in which Brobdingnagians and Lilliputians 
and their effects and belongings totter about in endless dis- 
array and disorder. True, he watches them, he listens to 
them, he feels them, he even tastes and smells them, and 
yet they possess for him as yet no meaning. Fancy your- 
self if you can being suddenly transported into some super- 
world wherein everything is wholly new and wholly dis- 
torted, and you will appreciate better the mental state of 
the infant as it contemplates its little world. 

But as the infant grows older, slowly, very slowly, the 
universe about him begins to yield up its mysteries, al- 
though in amusing, fantastic forms often. With every ad- 
ditional day of his life he becomes able to answer the ab- 
sorbing question "what is it?" with respect to a great many 
objects and situations, although still the mysterious world 
stretches away in a mist before him. We said in the pre- 
ceding lesson that the child lives in a world of sense ex- 
perience; that is true, and to the end that with wider ex- 
perience and new sensations he may the better come to be 
familiar with that world. If you can imagine a child in 
whose breast there was none of this impulsion to ex- 
plore and investigate and try out and experience, it is very 
evident that the number and faithfulness of that child's 
perceptions would never approximate those of children who 
normally search diligently after wisdom in the form of new 
experiences and new emotions and sensations. 

Earliest perceptions of infancy. Naturally the earliest 
experiences which the infant consciously has are those 
which center around the food taking process. Very likely 
the first things in his environment which he may be said to 



PERCEPTION 233 

perceive — i.e., know — are his bottle and the movements 
made by the mother to satisfy his hunger. The perceptions 
of the first days of hfe are those apparently which depend 
upon the sense of sight and, to some extent, hearing. As 
the days pass, however, the infant's eyes and ears become 
sharper it is true, but are aided gradually in their seeking 
after knowledge by the evolution of the other senses. You 
can deceive the infant with camomile tea, or with a solu- 
tion of quinine, or with the point of your finger placed be- 
tween his lips, for a season, but soon he will be in a position 
to refuse all of these deceptive things and will accept only 
his proper food. All this is because he has learned to rec- 
ognize the taste of milk. So with his other senses. Take the 
touch perceptions, for example. You can take away the 
bright, shining watch from the baby's fingers and substitute 
for it some less delicate plaything, but before you have done 
this many times the infant will refuse to take dehght in the 
substitute and will demand the original shiny object: he 
is learning to know. 

After all, however, the world into which the child has 
been ushered is so completely filled with strange and won- 
derful things that information about them all is well nigh 
a hopeless task. Consider, for example, the case of the 
baby's own hand. Possibly you have watched an infant 
when he first became interested in the fact that he pos- 
sessed a hand. For several seconds it may be he turned it 
about, peered at it with his unsteady eyes, felt it over with 
his other hand, wriggled the fingers, perhaps stuck them 
into his mouth — and all this because he did not know that 
it was a hand and certainly did not even know that it was 
attached to himself, nor even that there was any himself. 
By dint of experience and use and perhaps shght injury to 
it, however, he came soon to understand what its purpose 
and identity were. It is only in some slow, chance way 
such as this that the child succeeds ultimately in ordering 
the chaotic world around him and informing himself con- 
cerning its contents. But then, too, so many of these 



234 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

strange, unfamiliar objects appear to change shape or form 
or character at different times that even though the child 
has learned something about them, all his previous informa- 
tion seems worthless in the light of his next observation 
of them. Take your own perception of a simple table, 
for example. It looks quite different when you observe it 
from an angle from what it does when you look squarely 
at it from the front or side. If you have ever tried to draw 
a table from the object itself, you can perhaps appreciate 
this truth better. But if your own perception of a table 
varies with your viewpoint, what must be the case with the 
infant's perception of the same object, who sees it now 
from underneath, now from his mother's arms, now half 
enshrouded in its cloth, now quite bare? 

Thus, not only are the child's sense organs tardy in af- 
fording him accurate information about the things around 
him; the fact that so many objects undergo modifications 
or transformations complicates matters all but hopelessly. 
Miss Shinn, for example, writes thus of the surprise of her 
six-months-old niece at beholding her grandmother's head 
from behind instead of from in front, as had been customary : 

Later the same day she sat in my lap watching with an intent 
and puzzled face the back and side of her grandmother's head. 
Grandma turned and chirruped to her and the little one's jaw 
dropped and her eyebrows went up in an expression of blank sur- 
prise. Presently I began to swing her on my foot, and at every 
pause in the swinging she would sit gazing at the puzzling head 
till grandma turned, or nodded, or chirruped; then she would 
turn away satisfied and want more swinging. ... At first amazed 
to see the coil of silver hair and the curve of check turn into grand- 
ma's front face, the baby watched for the repetition of the miracle 
till it came to seem natural, and the two aspects were firmly knit 
together in her mind. 

Such is the confusion resulting from different points of 
view in the mind of the uncertain child! 

As many senses as possible appealed to. If you have 
ever observed a baby during one of its investigative moods 
— and in a sense every mood of the healthy infant is an 



PERCEPTION 235 

investigative one — you have probably marveled at the 
variety of sources whence it sought its information. Sup- 
pose, for example, that it were engaged in endeavoring to 
get some sort of satisfactory understanding of its rattle. 
Among the various things which it did was to look the rattle 
over carefully, examining it with much intentness (vision), 
shake it violently and listen intently to the sounds pro- 
duced (audition), certainly introduce it into its mouth 
(gustatory sense), handle and pull and twist and finger it 
(tactual sense), and very likely end by throwing it with all 
its might upon the floor. You were doubtless much amused 
to watch it, and perhaps picked the rattle up and returned 
it to the outstretched hands of the infant merely to observe 
what it would do next. If so, probably you found that it 
repeated its previous performance more or less exactly. 
What is the infant doing really by all this manipulation of 
its rattle? Merely finding it out, ferreting out its secrets, 
learning its mysteries, endeavoring to perceive it. And this 
is but typical of the spontaneous-learning method em- 
ployed by all normal children, whether the object studied 
be a rattle, or any other toy, or any objective matter in 
their environment. The child learns, in other words, by 
appealing to as many senses as 'possible with every new and 
unfamiliar object. Even the cat is perceived as the cat 
only after much experimentation on the infant's part, in 
which vision, audition, touch, and perhaps muscular sensa- 
tion have each contributed its share of information to the 
child. From a vague, moving mass seen now here, now 
there, a cat becomes by degrees a more or less familiar 
playfellow. 

A delightful age. Nothing makes early childliood any 
more fascinating than does this thirst after perceptual 
information on the part of every child. You have observed 
something of this deliciousness no doubt in observing the 
baby trying to make friends with its own reflected face in 
the mirror, or talking to a flower or a stone or tree as though 
it were endowed with life, or quaintly and naively remark- 



236 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

ing upon topics of conversation discussed by parents. The 
following is a quotation from Dr. G. Stanley Hall's famous 
study of the contents of children's minds on entering school, 
or, in other words, of the percepts and concepts of children 
of school age. It was a study made of Boston school 
children, the method being to ask those children entering 
the primary grades what they knew about certain sup- 
posedly familiar conceptions. 

Skeins or spools of thread were said to grow on the sheep's back 
or on bushes, stockings on trees, butter to come from buttercups, 
flour to be made of beans, oats to grow on oats, bread to be swelled 
yeast, trees to be stuck in the ground by God and to be rootless, 
meat to be dug from the ground, and potatoes to be picked from 
the trees. Cheese is squeezed butter, the cow says " bow-wow," 
the pig purrs or burrows, worms are not distinguished from snakes, 
moss from the toad's umbrella, bricks from stones, etc. 

What wonder that the investigator concluded that "there 
is next to nothing the pedagogic value of which it is safe to 
assume at the outset of school life." But even though all 
this is fascinating, it points to a serious defect in the early 
training of children. How poverty-stricken are most mod- 
ern environments of childhood! What can there be in 
a city block or flat, and in the narrow, sordid streets of the 
city, or the level, monotonous landscape that can satisfy 
the natural craving of the child for perception and con- 
ception? For experience and information? 

Perceptions of space and time. Wlio of us has not smiled 
at the absurdities of judgment as to time and space in 
children? The infant holds out its arms across limitless 
space as though to grasp the moon; it reaches for the sun- 
beam on the floor; it bends its body forward as though it 
could reach the toy on the rug at the other side of the room. 
So with time: telling the time of day is a hopeless puzzle 
for months and even years. Told to return home in an 
hour, the child has almost no notion of the limits of an 
hour. Minutes and hours and weeks and years are alike 
unintelligible to the younger child as measures of time-ex- 



PERCEPTION 237 

tent. But as they grow older, and acquire ever more and 
more experience with space and time-extent, their concepts 
become more lucid and their judgment of their extent and 
duration more accurate. So, as we have seen, with the 
increase in accuracy of every percept, and, as the percep- 
tions multiply in number and increase in dependability, 
obviously the conceptions become likewise nicer. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Distinguish clearly between a sensation and a perception. 

2. Observe an infant for fifteen minutes, making special note of any of 
its perceptions which appear to be tolerably dependable, or of any 
which appear still to be wholly inadequate. 

3. How does a conception differ from a perception? Illustrate the mental 
process whereby a child is able to build up a concept of table, 

4. Distinguish clearly between a perception and an idea. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. If pupils are to form correct perceptions — for example, in drawing, 
arithmetic, language, etc. — what should be true concerning the 
practice which the schoolroom furnishes them in their study of these 
subjects? 

2. It is a common maxim of pedagogy that instruction in any subject 
must proceed from the known to the unknown. How does this law 
arise out of the orderly building up of perceptions? 

3. Previous to the time of Pestalozzi (1800) education was based largely 
upon the textbook and the lecture methods. Pestalozzi insisted upon 
the necessity of direct object instruction wherever possible. Wherein 
lay the virtue of his contention? How has the application of this 
principle by teachers since Pestalozzi's day operated to revolutionize 
educational methods? 

4. What are some common practices in modern schools that tend to give 
children definite and concrete experiences and hence clear and accu- 
rate perceptions? (Cf. especially such subjects as geography, arith- 
metic, nature study, science.) 

5. If Dr. Hall's conclusion as stated in this lesson is true, to what defi- 
ciency or lack in pre-school training may be attributed the surprising 
undependabiUty of the perceptions of school entrants? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, chaps. 6 and 7. 

2. Betts, G. H. The Mind and its Education, chap. 7. 

3. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Studies in Psychology, chap. 6. 



LESSON 34 

ATTENTION 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Evidences of the fluctuation of children's attention. Do 
you note any gain or loss from grade to grade in degree of 
ability to attend? 

2. Wliether all the pupils are equally attentive to the lesson. 
If not, can you suggest possible explanations of individual 
variation in this respect? 

3. Any special devices employed by the teacher to stimulate 
flagging attention. Do you note differences in the ability of 
teachers to secure and hold the attention of children? 

Definition. Attention may be defined as the power of 
the human mind to select those stimuli among all the 
hundreds of other possible ones upon which it shall be 
focussed. Or, we may define attention as the ability to 
focalize a given object or idea in consciousness. You are 
able, for example, to attend to a picture, or the ringing of a 
bell in the church tower, or the odor of roses in the garden, 
or the taste of the grape, or the feel of velvet, or the dis- 
agreeable internal symptoms of indigestion, or the mus- 
cular twitchings of a fatigued hand. Any one of these 
objects or situations you may select out of your surround- 
ings at any given time and pay attention to it. Or you may 
even pay attention to abstract ideas which you have formu- 
lated as the results of a great multitude of past experiences. 
You may compare and weigh these ideas in what we term 
reasoning, and in this last-mentioned process lie the highest 
possibilities of attention. 

Attention fluctuates. Attention is not a static thing, 
even in adults. Still less is it so in children. The things to 
which we pay attention are continually changing. Sup- 
pose, for example, you are sitting at your study table hard 
at work upon some school task. Let some one open the 



ATTENTION 



door, or speak your name, or let a cry of "Fire!" be raised 
in the street below, or let the radiator suddenly begin to 
hiss with escaping steam, or let some fleeting digestive pain 
rise into the level of your consciousness, and immediately 
your attention shifts from the task at hand to the inter- 
posing stimulus. It will perhaps require an act of will 
power to enable you to return to the lesson. And even 
the lesson itself is continually changing, as now one point, 
now another is stressed. How impossible it is for one 
to read any tale in which there is no progress, no action, 
no change to stimulate our attention! And how much 
easier it is to read a story in which the rapidity of the action 
and the appealingness of the plot and situations hold our 
attention to the very last line, and the very last word. 
The nature of our con- 
sciousness is such that it 
is ever surging along like 
the waves of ocean to 
new facts or new aspects. 
Professor James speaks 
of consciousness as a 
stream in which now this 
idea, now that is borne 
aloft on the crests of the 
waves. 

The accompanying di- 
agram will illustrate the 
ease with which one 
group of ideas, or one 
train of thought, is dis- 
placed by another group. 
The ideas A, B, C, D,etc., 
represent what we may 
term the fringe ideas in 
our minds at any given 

instant, while the central idea X represents the main 
idea to which we are attending, and to which may be 




Fig. 8. THE FRINGE AND FOCUS OF 

CONSCIOUSNESS 
A'=the focal idea at any given instant; A, B, 
C, etc., represent various fringe idea gnnips 
lying just below the threshold of conscious- 
ness. Idea group A may succeed in dislodg- 
ing X under the conditions explained In 
the text 



240 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORI^IAL SCHOOLS 

given the term focal idea; i.e., the idea in the foreground 
or focus of consciousness. Let X, for example, represent 
the train of ideas connected with the studying of the lesson 
referred to a moment ago. You are engaged in unraveling 
the meaning of an especially diflBcult page or paragraph, 
in the interpretation of which all your mental powers are 
engaged. But now, suddenly let idea train A, which is 
nothing more than a dim consciousness that some one is 
talking in the next room, be intensified by that same per- 
son calling aloud your name, and immediately idea group X 
flees away from the focus of consciousness and idea group A 
springs in to take its place. Or, again, suppose the hissing 
of the radiator is suddenly violently increased. The same 
thing happens : your focal idea group X yields place to the 
fringe idea group B, which is your vague awareness of the 
noise of the radiator, and A'' and B exchange places. 

It may be said, then, that if it were possible to take a 
snapshot of our mind at any given time we should find the 
resulting negative to be similar in structure to the diagram. 
Some central idea group upon which we were working or 
about which we were musing would occupy the focus, while 
in the background would be clustered probably several 
somewhat related idea groups which would represent the 
fringe of the negative. And any one of these fringe ideas is 
actively striving to drive out the focal group and supersede 
it ; the latter retains its place in the foreground only because 
the intensity of the fringe stimuli is weak, or because we 
are spontaneously interested in the focal chain, or because 
by the conscious exercise of our will power we force our- 
selves to hold to the matter in hand. But even in the last 
two cases we shall not succeed in shutting the fringe group 
out if that growp chances to become too insistent. In a sense 
we are somewhat at the mercy of compelling stimuli, and 
the function of choosing to what we shall attend is there- 
fore partially limited by circumstance. 

We said above that even the focal ideas are continually 
changing their aspects or points of view. If you will try 



ATTENTION 241 

this simple experiment, perhaps you will come to appreciate 
the necessity for such constant changing. Look j&xedly at 
the numeral XII on the clock for several minutes, endeav- 
oring to allow no fringe ideas to exclude the focal idea — the 
figure XII. You will probably discover that for a second or 
two your eyes remain firmly gazing at the XII, but that 
very soon you catch some such idea groups as these leaping 
momentarily into consciousness: "It is exactly 10 o'clock"; 
"but I must look at the XII again"; "I wonder how long I 
have been looking? " "No, I must look only at the XII"; 
"the clock is round"; "my next class is in . . ." "But here J 
I am thinking of something else." And so your thoughts 
travel along on the waves of consciousness, now bringing 
you back to the original X idea group, now bearing you far 
away from it. Thus, if a stimulus does not change or vary 
you cannot possibly attend to it steadily. The waves of the 
stream of consciousness must go on and on. Nothing can 
check their progress, and only by exerting voluntary will 
power are you able to redirect the surging stream back anon 
to X. It does not matter what is the nature of X: it may 
be the figure on the clock, or it may be a picture, or it may 
be a problem in arithmetic, or a moral decision; in order to 
attend to it at all, it must either be changing in itself, or 
else our own associations which it calls up must flow on and 
on. Naturally attention is easiest to focal idea groups 
which change in themselves; it is easy, for example, to pay 
attention to a motion picture, or firemen on the roof of a 
burning building, or a musical melody. It is much more 
difficult to attend to an object which in itself does not 
change, because the initiation and direction of our attentiveness 
is subjective. The latter situation is at odds with the law 
of inertia; the former is in harmony with it. 

We have noted, therefore, two aspects of adult attention. 
In the first place, the attentive state includes both focal and 
marginal idea groups; and in the second place, these groups 
must continually be in flux, resembling the crest and the 
trough and the succeeding crest of the waves. 



242 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

Three kinds of attention. There are three different 
kinds of attention, or three situations in each of which 
we pay a different form of attention according to the stimuli 
which call it forth. They are (1) involuntary attention; 
(2) non- voluntary, or un-voluntary attention; and (3) vol- 
untary, or forced attention. Let us discuss each of these 
in order. 

Involuntary attention. In the example given above you 
will recall that we allowed X idea group to represent the 
page in the textbook upon which your attention was fo- 
cussed, while idea groups A, B, and C represented fringe 
groups, such as low, indistinct talking in the next room, the 
hissing of the radiator, etc., all of which latter you were 
vaguely conscious of as making up the sum total of your 
consciousness. Now, when the talking increased in inten- 
sity and volume, and you chanced to overhear your own 
name called by some one of the group, immediately idea 
group A (the talking in the next room) forced A"" from the 
focus and darted itself into the foreground of j^our atten- 
tion. In other words, you paid involuntary attention to 
a stimulus. You could not help allowing the thoughts of 
your lesson to lapse, and perhaps springing up and hurrying 
into the other room to join in the conversation. Invol- 
untary attention may therefore be defined as attention 
which we pay because we cannot help it. More accurately 
speaking, we pay involuntary attention whenever a novel, 
or intense, or sudden stimulus strikes upon a sense organ 
and so dislodges the focal ideas in mind at the moment. 
Other illustrations of involuntary attention would include, 
for example, attending to a sudden explosion, or a sharp 
flash of lightning, or the cry of "Fire!" or an odor of escap- 
ing gas, or a sudden sharp cramp, or a cut finger, or a 
piercing scream, or any other stimuli which force them- 
selves into our stream of consciousness. Think, for ex- 
ample, of the crowd on the street attracted to a pohce 
patrol or to an accident. Think of the many-colored and 
changing electric-light signs and the cleverly arranged ad- 



ATTENTION 243 

vertisements which are designed to catch the eye and so 
arouse in focal consciousness an awareness of the signifi- 
cance of the advertising. Can you extend the hst of 
stimuH which invariably drive out present thoughts and 
substitute for them others totally different in nature? 

Non-voluntary, or spontaneous attention. Contrast 
with this sort of compelled attention another kind of com- 
pelled attention, but compelled subjectively rather than by 
the intensity of the objective stimuli. Non-voluntary, or 
un-voluntary, or spontaneous attention is that attention 
which we pay to an object or process or idea group which 
possesses for us an inherent and personal interest or appeal. 
A very interesting story, for example, we attend to because 
it does interest us. Nearly every person has some particu- 
lar sort of story which he likes best. Some of us like ro- 
mance, others adventure, others historical tales, others 
railroad stories, etc., and we prefer them because we possess 
a spontaneous interest in such situations as may be ex- 
pected in these several varieties of yarns. Other stimuli 
which arouse our spontaneous attention include such things 
as seeing something about us, or our school, or our friend 
in the newspaper; picking out the violin from the other 
instruments in the orchestra because ice play the violin; 
turning to the "woman's page," or the sporting page, or 
the children's page of the newspaper, according to our in- 
terests; watching the amusing behavior of the baby on the 
car, because we are interested in children; or noticing the 
new coat styles because we wish to buy a new coat, etc. 
In other words, spontaneous attention is that attention 
which we pay to such experiences as appeal personally to 
our own circumstance or condition or longing in life. Can 
you supply other illustrations of this type of attention? 

Voluntary attention. When you were engaged in focus- 
sing all your energy upon the lesson which you were study- 
ing it is probable that you were making use of voluntary 
attention. You were paying attention to the X idea 
groups, not because they were presented to your senses 



244 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS j 

in some startling way (involuntary), nor perhaps because ' 
you had been led by a personal interest in the subject matter 
to familiarize yourself with it (spontaneous) . Rather, you 
attended to the lesson because you realized that the mastery _ 
of it was expected of you, and you would suffer social dis- ■ 
favor and injured pride if you came to class to-morrow and 
were obliged to confess that you did not have your lesson. 
We may define voluntary attention, therefore, as the sort of 
attention which we pay as the result of exercising our wills. 
We voluntarily (Latin: volere, to will) select such idea groups 
as are concerned with the lesson and exclude all other 
groups from our minds. It may be that spontaneously 
we should have chosen to read an interesting story, or go 
to the theatre, or pass the evening with a friend. But our 
knowledge as to the fitness and appropriateness of things 
prompted us to apply our minds to the book rather than 
allow ourselves to do other more interesting matters. Other 
illustrations of the voluntary type of attention may be 
observed in such situations as the following: listening to a 
very uninteresting speaker; studying a railway time-table, 
in order to locate a particular train; settling down to work 
after an hour of social relaxation; copying in ink an exercise 
previously written with a pencil; participating in a lifeless 
conversation; searching for a number in the telephone 
book; making a decision between two possible lines of 
action, each of which is equally unattractive. The pur- 
pose of voluntary attention is therefore to win for our- 
selves results in attainments or reputation or abilities 
which are necessary to our present or future well-being. 
It is apparently the most difficult form of attention to pay 
because it is the only one of the three forms which requires 
marked mental effort in order to bring it to pass. 

In our next lesson we shall apply all these general facts 
about attention to the attentive powers and processes of 
children. 



ATTENTION U5 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Select some small object, such as a tiny figure in the wall-paper, and 
endeavor to pay attention to it for two minutes. Write down the re- 
sults immediately afterward. 

2. Look carefully through the advertising section of some standard 
magazine, and select those advertisements which you think are best 
written. Give reasons for your opinions in each case. What ones are 
least compelling in general? 

3. Make a list of ten things to which you have spontaneously attended 
during the day. Add to it a list of ten things to which you have paid 
involuntary attention during the day. 

4. The next occasion on which you attend a public lecture, note the atti- 
tudes of attentiveness in yourself and, as far as possible, in your im- 
mediate neighbors. Discuss your results in class. 

6. Which type of attention do you think most adults pay to their voca- 
tions and professions? Do you know of any exceptions? 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. In how far is fatigue a factor in reducing the degree of attentiveness 
of pupils? What common provisions are made by most school sys- 
tems to reduce the possibilities of fatigue to the minimum? 

2. Contrast the socialized with the non-socialized school in its probabil- 
ities of stimulating the maintenance of the attention of pupils at its 
maximum. 

3. What should you say are the characteristics of a good lesson as judged 
by the profoundness of attention paid by the pupils? 

4. What are some common distracting stimuli of the schoolroom? How 
may they be to a considerable degree reduced? Would it be possible 
or wise to rule them out absolutely? 

5. What are some obstacles to ability to attend for which poor physical 
condition is responsible? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, chap. 4. 

2. Breese, B. B. Psychology, chap. 3. 

3. James, Wm. Psychology, chap. 13. 



LESSON 35 

ATTENTION (continued) 
What to look for in the observation period: 

1. The typical form of attention paid by the children. __ 

2. Whether there is greater evidence of the voluntary type bemg 
paid by children in the mtermediate grades than in the lower 
or higher. Why.? 

3. The ease with which the attention of an mdividual or of the 
entire class may be diverted to the most irrelevant consid- 
eration. 

4. \^^lether the teacher is needlessly "sugar-coating" educa- 
tion, or whether, on the other hand, she is very wisely and 
unobtrusively seeing to it that the lesson makes an appeal to 
the natural interests and instincts of the children. 

Characteristics of attention in younger children. The 
things to which the infant in the first few weeks of its hfe 
pays attention are, as we have seen, those persons, things, 
and processes connected with the taking of food. The move- 
ments of the mother in preparing the bottle, for example, 
invariably rivet the weak attentive powers of the infant, 
and its eyes follow her about the room unsteadily as she 
busies herself in getting the bottle ready. Beginning also 
in this early life of the baby is the attentive attitude toward 
moving objects. Even though the mother be not con- 
cerned with preparing the food of the infant, but chances 
to be engaged in setting the room in order, or dusting the 
furniture, etc., the eyes of baby are certain to follow her 
movements. The same is true of the moving about of any 
other member of the family, or of a guest. A chair which 
continues to rock after some one has risen from it is likely 
to hold the attention of the infant until it ceases to move. 
A bird's cage swaying lightly in the breeze, or a curtain 
blowing at the open window, or the swinging pendulum 
of a clock are stimuli to which the attention response rarely 
fails to be in evidence. Even checkered sunbeams dancing 



ATTENTION 247 

upon the floor or against the wall or ceiling attract the eyes. 
So with auditory stimuli ; the banging of a door, or the tear- 
ing of paper, or a horn blown by some other child fix 
fleetingly the attention of the infant. Pain stimuli from 
within (organic) likewise are compelling to the rudimentary 
attentive powers of the baby. 

In general, we may conclude that the characteristic form 
of attention manifested by infants is the involuntary type. 
Only those stimuli which are in themselves intense or unique 
or moving succeed in penetrating beyond the sense organs 
and arousing consciousness. For the rest the young infant 
remains quiet and sluggish, sleeping a great deal, attending 
in its waking state to nothing in particular, its mental Ufa 
little more than a blank. 

But the child's mental life does not remain a blank very 
long. Nor does it continue long to attend only to stimuli 
which are in themselves compelling. Within a very few 
weeks you will find the child beginning to manifest a dawn- 
ing of interest in playthings and objects of furniture and 
parts of his own body as the manipulative instinct becomes 
stronger. He may sit or recline for several minutes at a 
time endeavoring to solve the riddle of the piano, or the 
electric-light fixture, or the tablecloth, or the telephone 
instrument, or the design in the wall-paper, or some other 
object near to him. Or, when a trifle older, he may pull 
his teddy bear to pieces, or destroy his rattle, or his nursery- 
rhyme book, or any other small article at hand. It is 
probable that the manipulative instinct is the first in- 
stinct beyond that of the taking of food which directs the 
child's attention to some concrete object and holds it more 
or less fleetingly for brief periods of time. Since now his 
attention is created from an instinct it must come about as 
the result of a dawning interest, for every instinct possesses 
a personal and immediate interest to the individual. There- 
fore you may conclude properly that in earlier babyhood 
there are evidences of the genesis of non-voluntary, or 
spontaneous, attention. 



248 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

Characteristics of the attention of boys and girls. Boy- 
hood and girlhood, as opposed to the period of earlier child- 
hood about which we have just been speaking, represent 
the age par excellence of the operation of the principal in- 
stincts, notably play, which may be taken to include such 
other original responses as the migratory, hunting, gregari- 
ous, collecting, and rivalry instincts. And because this 
period of life is the age in which these fundamental in- 
stinctive promptings operate with the least degree of fric- 
tion, because least modified and sublimated by experience, 
it follows that the spontaneous or non-voluntary type of 
attention is the predominating one throughout the period. 
Children in this age attend to their sports and their amuse- 
ments and their games and their relaxational activities 
freely and spontaneously, and for the simple reason that 
they are interested in such stimuli as their play environ- 
ment supplies to them without number and without limit. 
Let us summon up a few examples of play activities of 
childhood which challenge the free, spontaneous attention 
of their participants. 

This morning I watched a five-year-old boy delving with 
his shovel in the dirt of the garden. It was not gold nor 
precious mineral that he was seeking. Rather he was en- 
grossed in the tiny worms and the occasional bits of glass 
and the numerous small colored stones that his industrious 
shovel turned up. What prompted him.'' Curiosity — the 
thirst after knowledge. Was he intensely interested in his 
work, or was he merely plying his spade to pass the time 
away.? By no means the latter. He was earnestly and 
thoughtfully examining every object which met his hand. 
Even his mother had to speak twice to him before he was 
fully aware that she had spoken. For somewhat more than 
an hour he thus labored in the dirt of the garden. His face 
grew flushed with the exertion, and he paused more than 
once to regard an incipient blister in his palm. No matter; 
he kept industriously at work. Spontaneous attention, 
called forth by his curiosity, prompted him. If you could 



ATTENTION 249 

only succeed in holding his attention for an hour to his 
school work a little later, with all the concentration which 
he manifested this morning, you could probably promote 
him into the second grade in a week! And yet how un- 
fortunate and unwise it would be to attempt to develop his 
mind any more rapidly than his frail body could keep pace. 
Nature after all knows best and tempers her instruction to 
his strength. 

We have referred before to the intentness with which the 
child builds up his tower of blocks, adding each successive 
unit to the rest in fear and trembling, as it were. The play 
instinct compelled his spontaneous attention to the pro- 
cess until the dramatic moment arrived when they toppled 
over, and thus released his concentrated attentiveness. In 
play practice for skill, too, this same sort of un-voluntary 
attending is seen. It is far easier, for example, for a boy 
to concentrate his every energy upon the practice of a new 
curve in baseball than it is for him to practice for an equal 
length of time upon his scales at the piano! In the one 
case there is an immediate instinctive interest; in the other 
such interest, if present at all, is rather a remote one at- 
taching itself to a possible future condition of skill at the 
piano which is still so far away that there is little spontaneity 
in the attention vouchsafed to it. How easy it is, too, to 
attend to such instinctive activities as collecting, or explor- 
ing, or tunneling, or tracking some prey to his lair! A 
broken toy, or a snarled fishing-line, or a leaking boat can 
be more readily attended to than an object which has no 
direct relationship to play. And how easy it is to attend 
to an interesting story which is being read! The youthful 
searcher after adventure and romance as recorded in some 
thrilling tale is utterly oblivious to the passing panorama 
of life around him. No doubt you can remember many 
favorite stories which you used to love in the golden days 
of childhood, and which you can still recall tolerably ac- 
curately, thus bearing witness to the profound attention 
which you devoted to them at the time. 



250 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

It should perhaps be stated that, while the spontaneous 
type of attention is thus seen to be the characteristic type 
during childhood, the involuntary form is of course called 
forth on occasion. Whenever stimuli which are in them- 
selves compelling reach the sense organs, they compel at- 
tention away even from that play or work which is in- 
herently interesting, and to the unique or intense occurrence 
or situation. For example, no matter how profound may 
be a boy's interest in a game or a story, he is not slow to 
respond when the fire bells sound, or when an airship passes 
over, or when the automobile skids against the sidewalk. 
To such situations he turns his attention involuntarily, 
just as do his older and wiser fellows. For him, as for all 
of us, however, the involuntary attitude of attending be- 
comes only an incident; his predominating interests lie in 
situations which are inherently interesting to him. 

Voluntary attention in children. Play and happiness are 
normal conditions of childhood. Spontaneous attention 
should therefore be the rule. But beginnings have to be 
made, even in the magic time of childhood, to adjust one's 
self to the circumstances of adulthood. Hence the ele- 
ments of voluntary attending need to be founded in chil- 
dren's lives. In some cases, however, too early exercise of 
the power of forced attention results in distinct injury to 
the health of the child. Such, for example, would be true of 
children who are obliged to go to work while still little more 
than babies. By being compelled to pay attention to work 
situations in which little or none of the play element enters, 
very young children thus not only stunt and dwarf their 
physical growth, but retard and do violence to their mental 
growth as well. It may chance that you have seen such 
children, victims of what we term child labor, and victims 
of the greed of men. Still, such perverting and aborting 
of childhood and the normal expressive side of childhood 
are relatively uncommon. For the great mass of children 
everywhere childhood is enjoyed for childhood's sake, and 
the toil of the future throws little shadow upon it. 

Tut childhood is the prelude to adulthood; it is the pre- 



ATTENTION 251 

paratory period for living. Hence, since one of the req- 
uisites of adulthood is ability to pay sustained, voluntary 
attention, the foundation stones of this same ability have 
to be laid in childhood. Among the many situations in 
which and from which this ability is slowly evolved belong 
such activities as learning to dress one's self, and to bathe and 
care for the hygiene of the body; doing simple tasks about 
the house, such as washing dishes, and filling the coal-hod 
and the wood-box; studying and practicing music lessons; 
learning simple selections to speak or recite; and other 
activities commonly required of children. Thus, by the 
time the child has come up to school age he has formed 
certain elementary attitudes and habits of voluntary at- 
tention upon which the teacher may build in the more for- 
mal work of the school. And even in the schoolroom, as you 
have observed, the interest of a child is attracted to a given 
lesson often by turning it into play, and thus summoning 
up the more easily given spontaneous attentiveness. Nat- 
urally there are certain limits to this "sugar-coating" of 
education, but the fact remains that one of the best ways 
to train the voluntary attentiveness of a child is to furnish 
plenty of attractive material for his spontaneous attending. 
Not long since, I watched a group of kindergarten children 
weeding their somewhat neglected garden. Each child had 
a tiny plot in which were a few scattered flowers, with now 
and again a cornstalk. The children were inclined to play 
with a toad which lived in the damp stone wall beside the 
garden, and their weeding bade fair to be entirely neglected. 
But when the wise teacher pointed approvingly to the tiny 
plot of one of the tiniest girls — which had been surpris- 
ingly well weeded by an industrious child who had denied 
herself the happiness of playing with the toad — immedi- 
ately there was a general movement on the part of all the 
other children in the direction of the garden, and before 
many minutes had passed not a weed was to be seen any- 
where. The flowers and the cornstalks were undisputed 
possessors of the plots. You can understand thus how, by 
wisely playing upon the instinct of rivalry and perhaps 



252 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

approbation, the teacher succeeded in persuading her spon- 
taneous-minded children to attend to a piece of difficult 
work until they had finished it. 

In brief, the heart of the child is in his play which he has 
either just left or else is shortly to resume. You may send 
him to the store on an errand, and ply him with warnings 
not to forget what he is to get, but you need not be sur- 
prised if he returns with only a part of the order, or with 
totally different things from what were required. And yet, 
if there were any candy mentioned as a possibility, he 
hardly forgot that! All attempts at voluntary attention 
are likely to be unpleasant until through interest or the 
arousal of ultimate desirable ends a non-voluntary atten- 
tiveness may come in to urge the child forward into ever 
greater and greater conquests of mind. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Observe an infant in the cradle for ten minutes, paying special heed 
to the things to which he attends during that time. 

2. Observe a group of children at play on Saturday, and note the sort 
of attention which they appear to be giving to their games. 

3. Report any illustrations which may come under your notice of vol- 
untary attention paid by a child, or a group of children. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. What would be some disadvantages of the voluntary type of atten- 
tion as the one chiefly appealed to by the work of the school? 

2. Some teachers of the old school still maintain that a prominent end of 
education should be the developing in children of ability to pay the 
strictly voluntary brand of attention regardless of whether any inter- 
est inheres in the educative process or not. What is your reaction 
to this contention? Is there, then, any positive relationship between 
interest and effort? 

3. In how far do you think the successful schoolroom atmosphere in- 
spires children to propose the investigation of interesting topics and 
questions that arise out of the lessons? When the children feel that 
they are thus originating their own problems what is the type of at- 
tention that they are apt to give in finding the solutions? 

4. What are some good ways of securing attention? Some poor ways? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Betts, G. H. The Mind and its Education, chap. 2. 

2. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Studies in Psychology, chap. 4. 



LESSON 36 
MENTAL IMAGERY 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Whether the children appear to be getting clear images from 
their study. 

2. In how far the teacher takes special pains to clarify and or- 
ganize the information which the class is receiving from its 
study, discussion, and field work, to the end that clear and 
definite images may be guaranteed. 

3. Evidences in support of the statement: "Childhood is the 
springtime of the imagination." 

4. Any evidence that the study of the lives of great men and 
women of the past is firing the imagination of the children. 

Imagery defined. In our discussion of perception we 
discovered that all our sources of information concerning 
the outside world are derived through the five senses, and 
that in a similar way all information which we have con- 
cerning internal or muscular reactions within ourselves 
came about through the kinsesthetic and organic senses. 
Once such sense impressions have crossed the threshold 
of consciousness, as we saw, they acquire meaning and are 
termed perceptions. We referred, for example, to the per- 
ceptions of the bottle and the milk and the processes con- 
cerned with the taking of food by the infant as arising from 
seeing those objects and processes. We referred also to 
certain auditory and olfactory and tactile and gustatory 
and organic and kinsesthetic perceptions which arose from 
actually hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, etc. In this 
lesson we are to be concerned with the results of percep- 
tions. Images may be defined as the traces left in the nerv- 
ous system by perceptions and sensations, and which may 
be revived in the same or in different order as when originally 
experienced. Obviously, the nervous system must be so 
constructed as to be able to retain all the many impressions 



254 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

which are borne in to it from the end organs and interior 
of the body. These traces are termed in psychology images, 
and make up what we term our imagery. Having seen, for 
instance, the bottle and the milk, and having experienced 
the satisfaction from drinking the latter, the infant retains 
certain more or less sharp images of the whole process of its 
food preparation and taking. Let us illustrate this power 
of the nervous system to image previous experiences by 
citing some other common examples. 

Illustrations of our imagery. If you were asked to recall 
to mind the appearance of your own home, you would find 
little difficulty probably in reinstating the traces left in 
yoiu" mind of your past experiences with the home. No 
doubt you could draw a plan of the house, indicating every 
window and doorway and correctly locating every room and 
hallway within. So with the people who live in it; you can 
summon up pictures of every one. In such case, your pic- 
ture is known as a visual image. You have visual images 
of all of your friends and neighbors, your street, the land- 
marks of the town in which you live, the sunset, the moon- 
light night, the cloudy sky, and the shimmering lake. In 
short, there is nothing which you have ever seen and noted 
which does not continue to remain at your hand, ready to 
be called back at will. So with things which you have 
heard. You can still "hear" in your mind's ear the melody 
played at the piano, the shrieking whistle, the puffing of 
the locomotive, the swish of the waterfall, and the roar of 
the ocean. You can also "hear" your friend's voice, the 
barking of the dog next door, and the cheery boiling of the 
kettle at evening. Such traces of past experience left in 
the nervous system are known as auditory images. 

In the case of the skin sense perceptions it is no different. 
On the side of sensations of cold, you are able to recall how 
the ice "feels," and the still, frosty, winter evening; on the 
side of sensations of warmth or hotness, you can easily call 
up memories of the hot radiator throwing out its heat 
waves full against your face, or the midsummer sun pour- 



MENTAL IMAGERY 255 

ing down upon the parched street at noonday. Pain mem- 
ories also survive in your ability to reinstate at will images 
of a cut finger (not the sight of it in this instance, but rather 
the sharp, quivering pain of it) or images of a splinter 
driven deep into the finger. On the side of the simple sen- 
sation of touch, you are able to "feel" again in memory the 
smooth velvet and the soft fur, and the greasy dish. Such 
traces left by the skin experiences may be called generally 
touch images, or images from the dermal senses. ' 

So with the sense perceptions of smell. You can easily 
reinstate images in your mind of the odors from a bunch of 
freshly plucked roses, or the delicious fragrance of an apple 
orchard in springtime. You can also easily summon up 
images of the smell of escaping gas, or of decaying vegetable 
or animal matter, or of the freshness of the air after a 
thunder-shower. Such images resulting from perceptions 
of smell may be included under the head of olfactory 
images. The case is not different with the traces of taste 
perceptions. Without any difficulty most of us can repro- 
duce the taste of the tart apple, or of the pear, or of vinegar, 
or salt. Such images which the nervous system continues 
to retain after original sense experiences with the articles 
of food we may term gustatory images. 

On the side of the organic images, the ability to retain 
them faithfully is not so marked as in the case of the five 
surface senses. Still, we can to a degree reinstate the ach- 
ing tooth and the headache, and the general feeling of ennui 
in our minds ; such images are included under what we may 
term organic images. The same may be said of the images 
resulting from muscular contractions. We can call up 
fairly constant images of a fatigued arm or hand, with 
which we have done several hours of writing. We can 
also reproduce internally images of the sensations which 
came to us in such activities as running, skating, rowing, 
etc. To this class of images is given the general name, 
JcincBsthetic imagery. 

A psychological "image" versus the image in popular 



256 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

speech. From the foregoing classification of all possible 
forms of imagery you can readily understand the important 
difference which the term "image" as used in psychology 
has as compared with its meaning in popular terminology. 
We say loosely, "John is the image of his father"; or, "my 
dress is the image of yours." Image in such usage signi- 
fies a similarity which is objective. The image of psychol- 
ogy, however, stands for a similarity which is subjective, 
existing only in the mind of the person possessing it as a 
more or less exact counterpart of the objective reality 
which initiated it. Thus, your image of your home exists 
only in your own mind; it is subjective, standing for a 
reality which is objective. So with all your other store of 
mental images. 

There is another significant difference between the "im- 
age" of psychology and the "image" of everyday speech. 
According to everyday usage, an image is related to vision, 
to the sense of sight, wdiereas in psychological terminology, 
an image may be related to any one of the seven possible 
sensations: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, 
feeling organically, and muscular strain. Thus, according 
to the terminology of psychology it is just as correct to 
speak of an auditory, or a gustatory, or an olfactory, or a 
tactual, or an organic, or a kinoBsthetic image as to speak of 
a visual image. All are traces left in memory of original 
sense perceptions; as to which of the possible end organs 
of sensation are concerned matters nothing. You should, 
then, appreciate, at this point in our discussion, that so long 
as an experience is still present to the senses it is a sensa- 
tion plus a perception; after it has disappeared from the 
range of the senses it exists in the mind only as an image. 

The value of images. Obviously one's images are far 
less clear and constant than his perceptions and sensations; 
memory of an experience cannot compare in vividness and 
constancy with the vividness and constancy of the actual 
experience while it was present to the senses. For example, 
you no doubt find that the image of your home which you 



MENTAL IMAGERY 257 

can call up in your "mind's eye" is by no means so satisfy- 
ing to you from the point of view of tangibleness and de- 
pendability as would be the actual looking at it with your 
eyes. Nevertheless, the ability to retain these traces of 
sense perceptions is tremendously important to every one 
of us. But for them we should never be able to recognize 
past experience and events in which we had participated; 
we could recall nothing; we could imagine nothing; we 
could appreciate comparatively no work of art, because it 
would appeal to nothing in our past experiences in art; we 
could learn nothing, for there would be nothing old upon 
which to build; we could not reason, for we should have no 
ability to weigh images and so decide between two courses 
of action; we could not think, for we should be possessed of 
no powers of abstraction; in brief, we should be poor crea- 
tures of sense, tossed uncertainly about on the billows of 
life, without chart or guide. If you will for the moment call 
to mind the behavior of any one whose mental condition 
borders upon insanity or marked derangement you will per- 
haps better realize how hopeless is the state of one whose 
images have been confused and distorted by nervous dis- 
ease, and can from that judge of the condition in which a 
person would be mentally who had no mental images at all. 
A child's imagery. We have seen that the earliest sen- 
sations and perceptions of infancy are concerned with the 
food-taking situation. It follows from this fact that the 
first memories, or traces left by these early sense percep- 
tions, are those which have to do with the same food-taking 
process. The infant very soon comes to retain an image of 
the bottle in his mind, so that he recognizes the objective 
one when his mother produces it. The very fact that he 
recognizes it indicates that he retains an image of how it 
looks to which he is able to compare the objective one when 
it appears. In like manner, when the child's toy is missing 
he is aware of that fact: he possesses an image of it. So 
with his mother. So long as she is in sight, all is well; but 
let her step out of the room and at once there are symptoms 



25S PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

of distress. Obviously, the child retains an image of her 
and is satisfied only when she returns and he finds the image 
matched by the reality. Nor will any other mamma answer 
the description: he cannot be deceived by the most clever 
dissimulator. Do you recall the illustration cited in a pre- 
ceding lesson, of Miss Shinn's niece being dumbfounded at 
beholding the coil of gray hair and the back of a head turn 
suddenly and miraculously into grandma when grandma 
turned her head.'^ The explanation of this surprise lay in 
the fact that the coil of hair as seen from the rear did not 
match the partially formed image of grandma which the 
child retained in her mind from having seen grandma only 
from the front. And you recall that the child's attention 
was compelled time and again to this new aspect of grandma 
as seen from behind. Wliat the child was doing was to 
endeavor to link up the earlier perception with the later 
into a more definite and accurate image of grandma. As 
children pass out of infancy their rapidly increasing powers 
of observation naturally prepare the way for a rapid in- 
crease in the number and range of images which they pos- 
sess. We have said that the child lives in a world of sen- 
sation; we may now infer that the child also lives in a world 
of images which result from the sense perceptions with which 
he is surrounded. 

The springtime of the imagination. Thus does one 
writer refer to childhood — the springtime of the imagina- 
tion. Now the imagination is nothing more nor less than 
the playing with all these images which flood in upon the 
thirsty, eager mind. If you are at all familiar with the ways 
and wishes of children you know well that they live indeed 
in a world of unreality, based always, however, upon one 
of distinct reality in which they live, move, and have their 
being. But they seem to extract often from this world of 
actuality about them such wonderful experiences, such 
happy imaginings, such quaint ideas and beliefs, such im- 
possible values! If you have ever told a story to a child 
you must have been struck with the interest which he felt 



MENTAL IMAGERY ^59 

in your narration, judging from his baited breath and his 
dreamy, far-away eyes. He was living not in the world 
in which you were living, but rather in the delightful world 
of imagination. In the everyday life of children so many 
new experiences and discoveries plunge in upon their minds 
that they are fairly surfeited with them. Every story lis- 
tened to increases these deliciously satisfying images ; every 
picture from Mother Goose, every nursery rhyme likewise 
multiplies them. Every journey into the woods adds to 
them. For every new situation which arises the child has 
an explanation of his own to offer, and which quite satisfies 
him. Out of his heterogeneous store of imagery he is able 
to throw around every flower and every bush and every tree 
and every stone a veil of romance and myth which we older 
folk can but marvel at in wonderment. By the magic of 
his imagery he imputes life and sense to the inanimate ob- 
jects which surround him; he peoples the world with giants 
and pygmies, according to the mood of the moment; he com- 
munes with the flowers and the birds and the trees and the 
stones as with real playmates of the flesh ; in his happy play 
a line of chairs can be converted at will into a train of cars, 
or a friendly dog into a savage bear, or a dry-goods box into 
a house on a city street! From his lowly blocks he builds 
up columns and towers and churches and temples that rear 
aloft to dizzying heights into the sky. 

Children's ideals and ambitions. Probably at some time 
you desired more than everything else in the world to be 
like some one whom you chanced to know and admire. It 
may have been your own mother, or father, or aunt, or 
uncle. Or it may have been an older playmate, or a teacher. 
But like some one you certainly dreamed of being. Hardly 
a child passes up through the period of later childhood with- 
out experiencing this longing to be like some one who is par- 
ticularly admired. Every one must have an ideal ; it is a sort 
of hero-worship which enthralls most of us at some time 
or other during the magic age of childhood. Many of us 
never outgrow this longing of our childish hearts, and con- 



260 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

tinue through Hfe especially loving and looking up to some 
character of history or literature as our ideal. Usually, 
however, the age of hero-worship passes away and leaves us 
poorer perhaps than before. 

So with the ambitions of childhood. What boy does not 
long to be a locomotive engineer when he grows up? It is 
hard for many a boy at the tender age of nine or ten to im- 
agine a future in which he does not guide some mighty 
leviathan of the rails through gorges and under mountains 
and across plains with a touch of his hand! And where is 
the girl who does not long to be a teacher, or a milliner, or a 
dressmaker, or perhaps an actress? Fortunately, perhaps, 
our ambitions of childhood rarely come to fruition in ma- 
turity. Were it not so perhaps we should have none in our 
land in the next generation save trainmen and policemen 
and milliners and teachers and perhaps actresses! The in- 
fluence of the passing years and the new interests which are 
bound to come with newer and ever newer experience serve 
to wean us from the magic spell of childhood's ambitions, 
and open up before us a new heaven and a new earth, the 
future. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Bring to class a list of five different images which you have. 

2. Tell some story to a child and report upon his reactions to it. If 
possible note over a period of several days whether he still retains the 
story in memory and is playing with the imagery which it suggested to 
him. 

3. Had you an ideal in childhood? Do you still retain it? 

4. Had you some definite ambition in childhood? What Is your present 
attitude toward it? 

5. Look up the matter of children's lies. Why do they tell untruths? 
Can you furnish instances that have come under your own observa- 
tion? 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. If the images which children are to harbor as a result of their study 
of the school subjects are to be clear and accurate, what must be true 
continually of their sense training and their perceptions? Illus- 
trate. 



MENTAL IMAGERY 261 

2. The predominating type of imagery in most of us is the visual. This 
does not mean that in the training of children the strengthening of 
other types is to be neglected. Are there evidences in the children 
under observation that the visual is the predominating type among 
them? What efforts are being put forth by the teacher to establish 
dependable auditory and motor images? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, chap. 8. 

2. Betts, G. H. The Mind and its Education, chap. 8. 

3. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Studies in Psychology, chap. 3. 



LESSON 37 
MEMORY AND IMAGINATION 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. The eagerness with which children supply, to the topic under 
discussion, either slightly related or wholly unrelated ex- 
periences which they have themselves had. 

2. Evidences of the desultory, or "scrappy " nature of children's 
memory, especially of those in the lower grades. 

3. Whether a high degree of interest is attending the children's 
learning. 

4. In how far the teacher is endeavormg to see to it that the 
children are properly organizing and linking up their memory 
material; i.e., are constructing from the desultory memory of 
childhood the foundations of a dependable logical memory of 
maturity. 

Memory and imagination. In the previous lesson we 
found that every sense perception experienced by an in- 
dividual leaves traces, or images, in the nervous system of 
that individual. We found that there were visual, and 
auditory, and tactual, and olfactory, and gustatory, and 
organic, and kinsesthetic images, thus making up the sum 
total of one's imagery. Imagination we define as merely the 
ability to reinstate these images, regardless of whether they 
are revived in the same order or form in which they were 
originally presented or not. For example, we discovered 
that a child's imagination leads him to work over and inter- 
twine various of his images into totally new combinations. 
Thus, a story told to him he proceeds at once to take re- 
markable liberties with in his imaginings. Jack the Giant- 
Killer may be in the child's imagination anything but the 
character which you ascribed to him when you told the 
story; so much so, indeed, that perhaps you will be quite at 
a loss to recognize in the Jack of the child's play and ques- 
tioning and dramatizing the Jack of the story. In other 
words, the higher nervous system is of such an integrating 



]\IEMORY AND IIMAGINATION 263 

and harmonizing nature that original experiences are 
quite transformed to suit the mood of the moment, or of the 
period of Hfe in which one is. Then, too, several expe- 
riences which were originally distinct and unrelated are 
often fused together in consciousness in such a way that 
apparently wholly new combinations are achieved. 

It is this integrating or fusing character of the mind with 
respect to the experiences which it registers in terms of 
images that often leads the uninformed to maintain that 
there are occasional fruits of the imagination which have 
no basis in past experience. If you will recall to mind some 
of the weird, impossible tales of Poe, for example, you will 
perhaps tend to lean toward that conclusion yourself. But 
this is a false opinion. Even the seeming impossible oc- 
currences in Poe are based in certain past sense perceptions. 
The originality of the author lies only in his ability to com- 
bine original perceptions into new settings and new images. 
It is not unlike a patch- work quilt; dozens of pieces from 
this old garment and from that are brought together and 
combined into a new quilt. In a similar way, the mind 
fuses together experiences of this and of that into apparently 
new combinations. The old adage, " there can be nothing 
new under the sun," is herein justified. Even a great in- 
ventor, or a great writer, or a great artist is limited in his 
execution by his experience, or his store of images. Edison 
invented the electric light — apparently something wholly 
new — by linking together knowledge gained in great 
numbers of experiments until he was able to combine his 
several knowledges in such a way as to control a hitherto 
uncontrollable force. So with the writer: by casting new 
designs about age-old characters and plots and human in- 
terests he is able to produce a David Copperfield or a Cot- 
ter's Saturday Night. 

One other thing should be said about imagination. It 
may take the form of apparently new inventions, as noted 
above, or it may merely prompt us to day-dream and build 
air-castles to no purpose. In the latter case the imagina- 



264 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

tion may be said to be passive; in the former, active. In 
either case it is productive: i.e., it takes groups of images 
from innumerable experiences and combines them into a 
new product. 

Memory, however, may be defined as reproductive im- 
agination. It is the abilitij of the mind to reinstate past ex- 
periences as they occurred, i.e., in the same order and form, 
and to recognize them as definite past experiences. For ex- 
ample, your image of your own home, which you are able 
to call up at will, you recognize definitely as a true ex- 
perience. So with your other images which are associated 
more or less changelessly and constantly with definite ex- 
periences of the past. Herein lies the great difference be- 
tween imagination and memory: — the former may or may 
not be composed of exact images of definite past experience; 
the latter must be, and it must be recognized as a faithful 
reproduction of such experience. And because memory 
consists of the ability to reinstate and recognize past images 
or perceptions, it is properly classed as reproductive imag- 
ination. You can appreciate for yourself the value of 
recognition as an element in the memory process by consid- 
ering the mental confusion and helplessness which would 
result were a child unable to recognize that 7 X 9 = 63, etc. 
If he were not sure of himself his memory would be of little 
use to him. 

We are now in a position with respect to memory and 
imagination to make the following classification of imagery: 
Imagination: 

(a) Reproductive imagination: 

(1) Memory. 
(6) Productive imagination: 

(1) Active: 

Inventions, artistic creations, etc. 

(2) Passive: 

Day-dreams, reveries, etc. 

It is evident from this classification, and from the pre- 
ceding discussions, that imagination is a term which in- 



MEMORY AND IMAGINATION ^65 

eludes all memorial processes, and that, psychologically 
speaking, memory is a sub-division of imagination. The 
term "imagination" has, as its root meaning, "image," and 
for this reason comprises properly all types of mental re- 
sponse based upon images. Both the actual memory pro- 
cess and the more generic imaginative activities are, as 
we have pointed out, based upon images. In what sense 
is the term "imagination" likely to be used in popular 
phraseology? Witness the far broader psychological sig- 
nificance of the term. 

Earliest memories of childhood. If you will think back 
into your own childhood in an endeavor to discover what 
memories stand out as being the most lasting in your early 
experience, it is not unlikely that you will find among the 
brightest and most vivid impressions still retained memo- 
ries of some birthday celebration, or some Christmas tide, 
or some trip away from home, or perhaps the first day 
passed in school. It may be, on the other hand, that in- 
stead of these more pleasant memories you find other and 
less pleasant experiences, such for example, as the time when 
you lay ill in bed for a month with one of the numerous 
so-called "children's diseases," or the occasion of some 
death in your family, or some severe punishment which 
you were compelled to suffer, or perhaps when you passed 
through some trying experience in which you were very 
much afraid. In other words, it appears that those mem- 
ories which remain with us longest are those which are 
tinged with a high degree of emotion, such as joy or sorrov/. 
Such experiences one never forgets, and the pleasant ones 
return with overwhelming force on occasion to take us back 
to the merry, care-free days of childhood. 

This very persistence of memories associated with strong 
emotion furnishes us a strong clue to the memorial capaci- 
ties of children. As a rule they are intensely interested 
in events from which they derive pleasure and happiness. 
Sometimes they are compelled to pay attention to things 
and happenings from which they derive rather pain or un- 



266 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

happiness than the reverse. In either event it is the vivid 
experience which makes the lasting impression; it is the 
vivid impression which remains longest in memory. Those 
experiences which, on the other hand, make httle impress 
upon the senses and summon up few associations in the 
mind are the ones which fade first. Activities accompamed 
by a high degree of interest or attention make for lasting 
and permanent memories, because they force upon the 
recording nervous system clearer and sharper images. 3{ 

Who of us, for example, cannot recall the favorite nook" 
or cranny wherein we were wont to seek sohtude or quiet 
in childhood? And who of us does not remember yet the 
Mother Goose and the nursery rhymes of childhood.? Who 
does not recall the favorite games, the well-loved haunts, 
the happiest hours lived, the caves and hillsides and forests 
explored? Golden memories of mature years are usually 
the survival of vivid experiences in childhood and youth 

Desultory memory of chUdhood. We adults possess as 
a rule a somewhat mterrelated memory, wherein each ex- 
perience is more or less closely related to each other expe- 
rience of like nature. For example, all our several ex- 
periences with the works of Dickens or with the process of 
manufacturing rubber goods are a sort of unit in the mind 
closely associated and logically connected. In children' 
however, the case is quite different. The typical memory 
ot childhood is what we may term a "desultory" memory; 
I.e., It comprises a great number of somewhat isolated 
lacts which It has gleaned from an exceedingly many-sided 
range of activity. Each one of these unrelated memories 
appears to be held indefinitely in the mind of a child, almost 
without connection with any other relevant experiences 
\ou may be surprised some day, for instance, to have a 
child to whom you have told a story some time before ply 
you with questions as to the character or characters, about 
whom you yourself have in the meantime no doubt for- 
gotten It seems that a child never forgets any experience 
which he has had. You or I forget very quickly those ex- 



MEMORY AND IMAGINATION 267 

periences and incidents in our lives and in our reading 
which do not appear to possess any particular significance 
for us; children rarely forget them, perhaps because their 
body of knowledge is much more rudimentary, and every 
new experience is clung to until later experiences of a similar 
nature can be referred for interpretation to earlier ones. 
Were it otherwise, each new experience would remain new, 
and would be speedily forgotten because there would be no 
mental nucleus to which to attach it. 

Thus it comes about that the child of tender years pos- 
sesses a considerable range of information and experience 
in a more or less scrappy or "desultory" arrangement. 
He knows, for example, something about giants and some- 
thing about dwarfs; something about air, and water, and 
steam, and vapor, and smoke. He knows something about 
honor, and truth, and politeness, and their opposites; he 
knows somethinr^ about clocks, and clouds, and stars, and 
cows, and goblins, and angels, and trains, and grasshoppers, 
and baseball, and a few hundred other activities or condi- 
tions or objects, all thrown more or less haphazard into 
memory in much the same way that they are here enumer- 
ated — without order and without relationship. 

But these very unrelated images and ideas which throng 
so vividly through the child mind will sooner or later be- 
come better organized through association into what we 
may call the "logical" memory of adults. Rapidly the 
child gains other and yet other experience in all these de- 
partments or phases of human life and activity until at 
last he possesses a tolerably unified and correlated series of 
memories. And yet adults often possess little better than 
child minds, so far at least as organization and correlation 
of experiences are concerned. Many of us have desultory 
rather than logical memories. 



268 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORAIAL SCHOOLS 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Tell a story to a child in which there is considerable imaginativeness, 
and note the interest which he manifests in it. If possible, report 
upon his reaction to the story; i.e., does he appear to be turning over 
in his mind the images which he has gained from the story, and does 
he question you further concerning it? 

2. Give illustrations of active and passive imagination. 

3. Determine if possible the kind of stories which children of five or six 
years of age appear to like best. Can you tell why.'' 

4. Recall your earliest memories of childhood. Are they explainable on 
the grounds mentioned in the lesson? 

5. Cite any illustrations which you may be able of the desultory nature 
of children's memories. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. In what ways are habit and memory related? Illustrate concretely. 

2. Contrast the values of strictly "memory" work with the kind of work 
requiring independent thinking on the part of the pupils. 

3. "It is the vivid experience which makes the lasting impression." 
What responsibility does this statement place upon the teacher and 
the teacher's methods? 

4. To what extent should the work of the school train the productive or 
creative imagination, as distinct from the strictly reproductive? Il- 
lustrate. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, chap. 9. 

2. Betts, G. H. The Mind and its Education, chap. 11, 

3. James, Wm. Psychology, chap. 13. 

4. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Studies in Psychology, chap. 2. 

5. Imagination and its Place in Education, chaps. 5 and 15. 

6. McMurry, F. M. How to Study, etc., chap. 7. 



LESSON 38 
THINKING 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Whether the children are permitted and expected to think 
for themselves. In what ways does the teacher strive to aid 
and encourage them in independent thinking? 

2. Evidences of the naivete of children's reasoning. 

3. Individual differences in the ability to think and reason. 

4. Whether children in the lowest grades do any real thinking, 
* i.e., is thinking ability something that appears suddenly in 

a higher grade, or does it represent a growth from the ear- 
liest beginnmgs in the pre-school life of the child? 

The concept. In our lesson on perception we saw that 
Vhenever sensations acquire meaning in our minds as the 
result of past experience they cease to be sensations pri- 
marily and become perceptions. We used as one of the 
illustrations of a perception the child's increasing experience 
with the cat. It sees the cat walking about, it perhaps 
hears its mewing, it touches and strokes its back, and may 
even be scratched by its claws — all of which sense im- 
pressions are transferred to the perceptive powers of the 
child and go to make up his knowledge about that partic- 
ular cat. Henceforth the child has a definite perception of 
the cat and recognizes it whenever it chances to pass. He 
likewise possesses a rather distinct visual image of the cat 
which enables him to call up a mental picture of it when it 
is not present. 

But so far the child has not learned anything about cats 
in general. To him there is only one cat in the world — 
Tabby. Let a dog chance to pass within range of the child's 
vision; immediately he thinks Tabbij, or his cat. On closer 
inspection, however, he notes certain differences between 
the dog and his image of cat. In his mind at present, if he 
could formulate his notion of a cat into words, a cat is some- 
thing that walks, may be either large or small, of one color 



270 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

or of another, and possessed of two possible languages. As 
experience succeeds experience, however, and as he sees 
other and yet other cats and other and yet other dogs, his 
notions about both begin to be somewhat clarified, until 
finally he arrives at a tolerably accurate notion of what a 
cat is as contrasted with what a dog is. He discovers, for 
instance, that not all cats are alike; there is a difference be- 
tween the cat and a cat A cat, he finds out, is a four-legged 
animal, with a mew, with sharp claws, much smaller than 
a dog, with finer fur, and of somewhat different habits. In 
a similar way, a dog is ultimately discovered to be an animal \ 
with four legs, with a bark, possessing coarser fur, and is 
considerably larger than the cat. Somewhat later he may 
learn that there are certain species of dogs, however, which 
are no larger than cats, and whose fur is quite as fine. The 
notion of dog is therefore narrowed down to a four-legged 
animal of certain well-known habits, and possessed of a 
bark. When this process has been completed, we term the 
resulting notion in the child's mind a concept. A concept is 
then, apparently, built up of many individual experiences, 
or percepts, the images of which are finally fused in the 
mind into a general notion. We may define a concept as a 
general name for a class of related objects. It is only after 
many experiences with individuals that their common qual- 
ities, or resemblances, may be extracted and combined into 
general ideas, or concepts. It does not matter whether 
the individual objects be cats, or dogs, or houses, or carts 
or trees, or flowers, or children. It does not even matter 
whether they be abstractions such as a kindly act, or a 
traitorous deed, or a false statement, or patriotism, or truth, 
or honor, or love, etc.: one's conception of all such objects 
or abstractions as these depends upon experience, or per- 
ception, of a great number of individual instances in which 
either the objects have been observed or the abstractions ex- 
emplified. One's conception of truth, for example, is based 
and built upon the number of times in which one has seen 
a truthful act done, or has read or heard about it. 



THINKING 271 

One other illustration of how the child builds up his con- 
cepts will be sufficient to show the importance of expe- 
rience with individual objects in the life and mental devel- 
opment of the child. Take the growth of the concept of 
table. In the nursery perhaps there is a small round 
four-legged table, stained dark brown. So far as the child's 
observation goes, a table is this particular table; the world 
holds for him at this point no others. But when he is 
carried into the next room, behold! a quite different table, 
large, stained a yellowish shade, and perhaps possessing 
five or more legs. As the child grow stronger and pene- 
trates into other rooms he beholds other and yet other 
tables, and as he enters other homes he discovers that per- 
haps no two tables are alike. And yet he is not confused 
greatly. Even though there are round tables and square 
tables and oval tables and three-legged and four-legged and 
five- and six- and eight-legged tables, and yellow and green 
and black and brown and natural finish tables, etc., a table 
is soon discovered to be a piece of furniture possessing legs 
and designed to place things upon. Here is his concept, 
and to it he may refer all new tables met in the future, with- 
out bothering to register a definite memory image of every 
one encountered. We said in the last lesson that one of the 
characteristics of a child's memory is its desultory nature: 
an image here and an image there and an idea here and an 
idea there, apparently without any connectedness or order. 
But it is these individual and isolated images which are the 
nuclei about which all subsequent perceptions of related 
objects or principles cluster. We said also that the char- 
acteristic of the vigorous adult memory is its logical and 
ordered arrangements of memory images. You can now 
appreciate that after all this well-ordered, adult memory is 
merely the child's desultory " here-and-there " memory 
developed and supplemented by hundreds of new expe- 
riences. In other words, adults have more accurate and 
filled out concepts, while children have only the skeletons 
upon which later concepts are built. 



272 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

The child is in the perceptive stage; the adult is in the 
conceptive age. 

But now what has all this to do with thinking? A great 
deal, because thinking is, after all, impossible and useless 
unless one has clear and definite concepts and ideas. How, 
for example, can you think and think intelligently about 
whether a man is just to his neighbor unless you have definite 
concepts of what constitutes justice.'' Or how can you de- 
termine what punishment to mete out upon a child unless 
you have some fitting notion of what constitutes an offense? 
As teachers, as citizens, as neighbors, as advisers and guard- 
ians of childhood, we all have abundant need of clear con- 
ceptions of some of the fundamental relationships between 
individuals and groups and nations and principalities. I 
shall cite but a single illustration to demonstrate the need 
of accurate concepts in order to think clearly. That illus- 
tration will be the conception of what constitutes good 
citizenship. 

As these lines are being written we are living in the midst 
of alarming uncertainties. Strikes are multiplying through- 
out the country. Boston, the city of culture, the Athens of 
America, is convulsed in the throes of one of them. Thiev- 
ery and robbery and larceny and outrage are being com- 
mitted in her erstwhile law-abiding streets. Over the whole 
country there looms the threatened strike of all manner 
of laborers in a general walk-out to coerce the capital- 
ists and financiers to either hand over all management of 
industry to the laborer, or else to vouchsafe to him a con- 
siderable part of it. And this in the midst of the twentieth 
century, when the greatest war that has ever rent the earth 
and the men of earth is hardly yet ended. Never before in 
the history of human kind has there been such great need 
of ability to think as there is to-day. But who is able to? 
Who has trained in himself such ideals of good citizenship, 
for example, as to be eager and willing to admit that there 
is justice in the contentions of both parties to the nation- 
wide disputes? Who knows what justice t5 .? Who is able 



THINiaNG 273 

to think? Obviously every disputant knows his side of 
the controversies; but who is broad-minded enough to con- 
sider the other side? Who knows what broad-mindedness 
is? 

What the world needs to-day is finer conceptions of citi- 
zenship, broader notions of man's own responsibilities and 
duties, nicer conceptions of justice, fairness, even magna- 
nimity. It was a relatively easy matter to arrive at definite 
conceptions of the ideals of a treacherous enemy country: 
it is a much harder thing to form conceptions of abstract 
qualities and principles, upon our national ideals of which 
must be dependent the outcome of the present labor diffi- 
culties. And so with the controversy over the Society of 
Nations. How few of us there are, after all, who are suffi- 
ciently intelligent in the matter of fair play and justice 
and peace between nations to have even an opinion! And 
yet everybody has one. Where is that broad-mindedness, 
based upon clear thinking and nice conceptions, which can 
dissipate the befogged conditions of so many of our minds 
and aid us in thinking this and all other perplexing questions 
through to an inevitable conclusion? 

Thinking a process of analysis. Thinking implies a 
problem. No one would ever think who encountered no 
problems in his life. But once the problem presents it- 
self, how shall it be attacked? Obviously by summoning 
to one's aid all possibly relevant factors bearing upon it, by 
selecting those which are possible explanations, and then 
by applying the proper ones to the problem at hand. Here 
is a quotation from Professor Dewey's book How We Think 
which illustrates excellently the process of thinking out a 
problem : 

Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferry- 
boat on which I daily cross the river is a long, white pole, bearing 
a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; 
its color, shape and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these 
reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties 
presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an un- 



274 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

usual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, 
ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere 
two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It 
seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying. 

I then tried to imagine all possible purposes for such a pole, and 
consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) possibly it was 
an ornament. But as all the ferry boats, and even the tug boats, 
carried like poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (6) Possibly it 
was the termmal of a wireless telegraph. But the same consid- 
erations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place 
for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat on top 
of the pilot house, (c) Its purpose might be to point out the 
direction in which the boat is moving. 

In supfK)rt of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was J 
lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see ' 
it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base so that, 
from the pilot's position, it must appear to project far out in front 
of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, 
he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats 
would also need poles for such a purpose. This hj^jothesis was 
so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I 
formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of 
showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to en- 
able him to steer correctly. 

The above is an excellent illustration of the thinking out 
of a problem. The narrator of the experience, having be- 
come interested to solve the mystery, proceeded to summon 
up all possible explanations which were in any way rele- 
vant; then, one by one eliminated all but the one which 
fitted the case. None of the possible explanations tallied 
with his conceptions of ornaments-for-a-boat, or wireless- 
telegraph-terminals, or any other purpose save the final 
hypothesis. 

Inductive and deductive thinking. Inductive thinking 
consists in amassing large numbers of individual percep- 
tions until the point is reached where it appears safe to 
draw a conclusion. Thus, if a child discovers that every sen- 
tence in the newspapers and the magazines and the books 
begins with a capital letter, he is justified in concluding that 



TfflNKING 275 

every sentence should begin with a capital letter. He has, in 
other words, proceeded from the particular to the general. 
In this way all universal truths are arrived at. A great 
deal of our adult thinking is done inductively. Thus, we 
have reached the conclusion that whenever it clouds up 
rain is likely to follow. This sequence has been so often 
observed that we feel justified in making the induction. 
Often, however, we fail to collect enough data to warrant 
our "inductive leap." Thus, it is sometimes said that a 
red-headed person is always quick tempered. This is ob- 
viously a case wherein we have drawn the induction pre- 
maturely ; having noted the sequence to be true in one case, 
we assume that it is always true, which is of course absurd. 
How do most of our superstitions grow up? 

The deductive method, on the other hand, sets out with 
the assertion of a general truth and proceeds to demonstrate 
particular derivatives to be true. For example, the lesson 
that all sentences should be begun with a capital letter 
would be developed deductively by stating the general 
fact — all sentences begin with a capital letter. The child 
would then proceed to explain why any given sentence is 
so begun, thus applying to individual situations the general 
truth contained in the major premise. The classic illustra- 
tion of deductive reasoning is: 

Major premise: All men are mortal. 
Minor premise: Socrates is a man. 
Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal. 

The term syllogism is applied to the above formula em- 
ployed in deductive reasoning. 

As a matter of fact there is a very close relationship be- 
tween induction and deduction in our everyday inferences. 
Induction cannot take place without deduction, nor can 
deduction take place without induction. For example, if 
the child has made the inductive discovery that iron is 
heavy, through having lifted and tested the weight of sev- 
eral pieces of it, he has but established a general principle 



276 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

which he did not know before; namely, all iron is heavy. 
In future experiences with iron he will refer the situation to 
his general principle, thus not only interpreting it in light 
of the principle but inductively strengthening the deductive 
principle involved. In our actual thinking, then, there is 
no particular difference between the two forms of reasoning; 
each is needed to supplement and strengthen the other. 

Children's reasoning. We have stated and reiterated 
the fact that the child lives in a world of perception, a world 
of new experiences and new images. It is not surprising 
therefore that the reasoning power or the thinking power of 
children should be somewhat confused and illogical. The 
child's ideas of time and space are vague, his concepts of 
most objects and all abstractions are wholly inadequate for 
several years. He moves in a world of giants and ogres and 
demi-gods, of myth and saga and romance, in which clear 
and positive knowledge develops rather tardily, and we en- 
courage this tardiness by delighting ourselves to keep the 
child in this delicious age as long as possible: we love his 
impracticality and defer purposely the time when he shall 
be a practical thinker and logician. On the other hand, you 
have certainly observed the working of children's thought 
on occasions which made you marvel at his astuteness, or 
wit, or quickness and keenness of comprehension. Occa- 
sionally a child manifests a mental perspicacity quite be- 
yond his years in his clarity of interpretation or dnference. 
In the following paragraph are several illustrations of 
children's thinking. They are selected from Brown's study 
(3) of the thoughts and reasonings of children: 

A child five or six years of age, after having visited with her 
father a mill in which some rather noisy machinery was in opera- 
tion, came to the conclusion that up in the sky there must be a lot 
of machinery which God puts in motion whenever He wants thun- 
der. A four-year-old boy desired to be permitted to go out in the 
rain because it would make him grow. A five-year-old girl ex- 
claimed, on seeing a crooked tree : " Oh, see that tree sitting down ! " 
Another five-year-old reasoned that because a person's eyes were 
gray she was getting old. A seven-year-old boy concluded that 



THINKING 277 

toads have rheumatism because they hop. A five-year-old boy, 
upon seeing an electric light being set up in front of his home, in- 
formed his mother that God would not have to make the moon 
any more. A six-year-old girl reasoned that when God wanted 
rain He pulled a string, like the string on the shower bath in her 
home. A seven-year-old, on bemg asked in the morning by his 
aimt whom he was visituig whether he had said his prayers the 
night before, replied that he had not. His aunt warned him that 
he must always do so, or else God would not take care of him. 
The child replied: "Well, he did." A four-year-old girl saw some 
plaster dogs in a store and asked if they were alive. On being 
told that they were not, the child replied: "But they are standing 
on their feet." 

You can very likely add to these illustrations of children's 
thinking and reasoning powers scores of other incidents 
which you have observed for yourself. Remember that 
in his feverish attempt to increase and clarify his knowledge 
every child thinks, however rudimentary may be his think- 
ing. Slowly he is adding experience after experience to his 
previous store, and thus slowly building up systems of con- 
cepts and bodies of related facts and ideas and principles 
which will later represent his basis for added study and 
thought. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Discuss the development of the child's concept of chair; of house; of 
obedience. 

2. On the basis of the illustrations of children's reasonings mentioned 
above, determine whether inductive or deductive reasoning is the 
natural form of reasoning which the child employs. Can you explain 
why this should be so? --V^ 

3. Enumerate six reasons why children reason so falsely or so naively. 

4. Be on the watch for any illustrations of reasoning which children do. 
Report any instances in class. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. In what definite ways does the socialized school foster the develop- 
ment in the pupils' minds of dependable concepts of good citizenship? 

2. Determine the probable pedagogical value of the teacher's repeated 
admonition to "Think!" or "Think hard!" 



278 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

3. Is the ordinary school guilty of failure to stimulate to the uttermost 
the thinking powers of children? Is there any considerable likelihood 
among teachers that the children's thinking will be done for them? 

4. Which of the reasoning methods is best adapted to the teaching of 
lower grades? Of intermediate grades? Of higher grades? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, chaps. 11 and 12. 

2. Betts, G. H. The Mind and its Education, chap. 12. 

3. Brown, H. W. "Thoughts and Reasonings of Children"; in Ped- 
agogical Seminary, vol. 2, pp. 358-96. 

4. Dewey, J. How We Think. 

5. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Studies in Psychology, chap. 5. 

6. Tanner, A. E. The Child, chap. 8. 



LESSON 39 
WILL AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. (In the lowest grades) Evidences of the absence of any real 
appreciation of morality. (In the other grades) Evidences 
of dawning morality and a moral code in the children as in- 
dividuals. 

2. Any case in which the children's behavior would seem to in- 
dicate very slight, if any, notions of what constitutes right 
and wrong. 

3. In how far it appears to be one of the aims of the school to 
inculcate in the minds of the children ideals of conduct and 
regard for justice and right. 

What is the moral condition of the child at birth? Cot- 
ton Mather, the eminent Puritan divine, appealed thus 
warningly to the boys and girls of his day and generation. 
"Ah, children, be afraid of going prayerless to bed lest the 
devil be your bedfellow. Be afraid of playing on the Lord's 
Day lest the devil be your playfellow. Be afraid of telling 
lies or speaking wickedly lest that evil tongue be tormented 
in the flames when a drop of water to cool the tongue will be 
roared for." 

The attitude which this appeal of Cotton Mather re- 
flected was the attitude generally held regarding the nature 
of children a few generations ago in Massachusetts. It was 
based upon the so-called "doctrine of human depravity" or 
of "original sin," which averred that every child was es- 
sentially an immoral being whose only hope of salvation lay 
in a strict diet of the Catechism and the Scriptures. Jona- 
than Edwards referred to children as "young vipers," while 
Cotton Mather, in another place, refers to them as "chil- 
dren of wrath." Even the schoolbooks of the time con- 
tained little else than a continual harping upon the original 
depravity of boys and girls. Thus, the last selection in the 



280 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

old New England Primer was a dialogue between Christ, 
a youth, and the devil. The youth resolves to spend his 
time in sport and play and to disobey his parents, to the 
great delight of the devil. Christ tries to persuade the 
youth to change his mind, assuring him that the devil lies 
and that his ways are deceiving. As the youth is reticent, 
Christ affirms that he will be burned in hell. In reply the 
youth suggests that he knows that Christ has mercy; that 
it will be easy to repent when he is old; and that all his 
sport and play will speedily come to an end. The youth 
laments and begs for mercy, but Christ replies : 

No pity on thee can I show, 
Thou hast thy God offended so; 
Thy soul and body I'll divide, 
Thy body in the grave I'll hide, 
And thy dear soul in Hell must lie 
With devils to eternity. 

And this is the sort of cheerful, positive instruction to 
which boys and girls were a few years ago subjected! An 
appeal to fear, rather than an appeal to more positive mo- 
tives to be good. Still, who shall say that the stern virtue 
and strict morality of the early founders of our country, 
which were the logical outgrowths of such instruction, were 
not the surest and most abiding heritage which they have 
handed down to us? 

The viewpoint of the time was that the moral nature of 
every child born into the world was actually vicious and in- 
herently bad. Hence all the energy of which the school 
masters and school dames were capable was directed to- 
ward redeeming them from sure and inevitable wrong and 
future suffering. 

Somewhat more recently another viewpoint of infantile 
moral nature has grown up. Stimulated by the poets, nota- 
bly Wordsworth and Rousseau, and by such novelists as 
Charles Dickens, many people have embraced the opposite 
conceptions of original child nature. We may apply to this 
theory the doctrine of original perfection, which states that 



WILL AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT 281 

the child at birth is essentially moral, virtuous, and good. 
The infant is, as Dickens says, so charmingly "fresh from 
the hand of God," and hence perfect in morality. 

As a matter of fact, it is rather true that neither of these 
doctrines is correct. The infant at birth is neither moral 
nor immoral, but rather unmoral, neutral — neither the 
one nor the other. It is like a perfectly balanced scale, 
however, ready to tip in either direction according to the 
influences which are brought to bear upon the one side or 
the other. Whatever of good or virtuous or positive that 
it absorbs from its environment and early training will tend 
to make for morality: and, conversely, whatever of bad or 
vicious or negative its environment suggests will make for 
the opposite condition, immorality. In other words, the 
infant's moral nature, like its mental, is a sort of tabula rasa, 
as Locke suggests, a blank page upon which the records 
cannot begin until the child itself begins them by expe- 
riencing and reacting to its experiences. 

The bearing of heredity. And yet we cannot assert 
that "all men are created equal," in a literal sense, for that 
would imply that every infant has the same innate tenden- 
cies toward morality that every other infant has. Such 
an assertion fails to take into account the influence of hered- 
ity upon future moral behavior. You have observed time 
and again among your acquaintances the insidious immo- 
ralities of the parentage dropping out in the children; just 
as you have also observed time and again the positive moral 
reactions of the parentage tending to appear in the children. 
In the next lesson we shall see how tremendous is the power 
of heredity in the matter of juvenile criminology and delin- 
quency. It should be remembered, on the other hand, 
that it is extremely diSicult to ascribe exact responsibility 
for the behavior of a child to heredity, for that would be 
leaving out of account the power of environment, which, 
as we have seen earlier, is very great. Perhaps the most 
satisfactory statement that we can make is that, owing to 
rather wide differences in the heredity of children from a 



282 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

moral viewpoint, it is easier for one to tend toward moral 
behavior, and for another to tend away from it. 

What constitutes a moral code? But the chief deter- 
minant of a moral code of a boy or girl is the habitual re- 
action which they make to their training and environment. 
One's moral: code is, therefore, leaving out the matter of 
heredity, built up upon the ease with which one's environ- 
ment can be manipulated to make possible improper moral 
responses (or the strictness with which it points to inevitable 
moral responses), upon the habits which are thus favored, 
and upon the consequent weakness or strength of the will. 
We may think of the first of these three factors, the ease 
or strictness of environment, as the social basis of morality. 
On the one hand, if there is little parental oversight of the 
play and- amusements and extra-home and school activities 
of the child, or if in consequence of that negligence of the 
home, it is easy for the child to drift into bad associates, or 
if within the home itself there is in evidence bad or improper 
influences, such as disputes between father and mother, de- 
ceitfulness on the part of either, vicious or improper con- 
versation or acts done before the child, etc., the social basis 
points inevitably toward the opposite of morality. On the 
other hand, if there is a wise oversight on the part of the 
home of the activities of the child, to the end that associates 
are wisely chosen and the home influences and extra-school 
activities are positive and constructive in nature, the social 
basis makes just as inevitably for morality. 

In the second place, the habits which are formed in child- 
hood are very significant factors in the building up of the 
child's moral code. We have already noted in earlier dis- 
cussions that most of the habitual responses of children are 
but modifications or sublimations or redirections of the 
fundamental instincts. Among the more important of 
these instincts which make for morality may be mentioned 
ownership, curiosity, the migratory response, teasing and 
bullying, and imitation. If any one of these is allowed to 
"run riot," without proper training into wise habitual 



WILL AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT 283 

responses, moral degeneration is sure to result. Take, for 
instance, the first of these instinctive tendencies : ownership. 
It is the] conclusion of two investigators that "the desire 
to own is one ofj the strongest passions in child life; that 
selfishness is the rule; that children steal, cheat, lie without 
scruple to acquire property; that they have no idea of 
proprietary right," What greater danger could there be 
to a child's moral code than this impulse which hesitates at 
nothing to obtain possession of something which may chance 
to be desired. It is difficult, in the light of this testimony, 
for children to appreciate what the difference is between 
"mine and thine," hence stealing becomes a natural habit 
unless there is proper direction of the instinct to own. And 
so with curiosity. The mere desire to experience something 
may inspire a child to commit multitudes of wanton acts of 
a destructive nature. One writer, for example, cites the 
illustration of the eight-year-old girl who set fire to a house 
"to see the fire burn and the engines run!" Doubtless 
from your own observation you can furnish other illustra- 
tions of the destructive side of the curiosity instinct. And 
then, perhaps most serious of all in its destructiveness, is 
the curiosity which centers around the sex instinct. Look 
through your daily paper and note the number of crimes 
and outrages committed directly at the dictation of the sex 
instinct. Unless the greatest caution is exercised by parents 
the all-compelling power of this subtle force may operate to 
inspire the child to form those habits which will blast his 
whole future, or at least restrain him from attaining to that 
state which is rightfully his in human society. 

On the side of the migratory tendencies so strong in the 
breast of every child there is likewise danger. Truancy 
may become a habit, and with it, in order to conceal it, may 
develop the habit of lying and deceit. Along with it, too, 
come associations with other children whose vicious natures 
may be positively ruinous to the child cohabiting with 
them for a season. Thus, the simple Wanderlust may re- 
sult in a vicious circle, and make for the reverse of all that 



284 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

is good and virtuous in the life of a boy who responds ab- 
normally to it. Teasing and bullying tendencies, if ab- 
normally encouraged, may result in a hardening of all finer 
emotions and a stifling of all sympathy and feeling for 
others in a child, which may easily be favorable to the per- 
petration of all manner of crime. And so, too, the imita- 
tive impulse, whether reflex or acquired. Especially the 
studied imitation is fraught with dangers. Children do 
what others do. They do what they hear or learn of others 
doing. Witness, by way of illustration, the uncensored 
moving picture of the more sensational sort, in which safe- 
blowing and theft and personal violence and underworld 
ways and a score of other equally vicious examples are dis- 
played before the staring eyes and the bursting minds and 
restless bodies of boys and girls. And then there is the 
"burlesque" show and its lurid posters outside to attract 
the curious eyes of children to the undress and often in- 
decent attitudes of the actors within, all of which cannot 
but excite the sexual and imitative tendencies which may 
become firebrands in the hands of immature and curious 
boys. We may repeat, then, what we said above; namely, 
one of the chief determiners of a child's moral code are the 
habits, or the redirected instincts, which he forms naturally 
and inevitably from the environmental forces playing upon 
him. 

Growth of will power. Growing out of the habits which 
a child forms is the third element in his moral code — 
his will power. A child does not live long surrounded by 
all manner of environmental influences before he begins 
consciously to pay attention to many of them, and vol- 
untarily choose as to what this or that response shall be. 
When he has reached this stage his will is beginning to be 
a factor in determining his moral code. In pretty nearly 
every response which mortals are called upon to make there 
is a right and a wrong. When the child is able to appreciate 
this niceness between possible responses to a given situation 
he is no longer a creature of circumstance, but a creature 



WILL AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT 285 

of will. For example, the eight-year-old may have two 
alternatives open to him; he may go fishing with his gang, 
or he may remain at home and mind the baby while his 
mother passes an afternoon of rest at a neighbor's. Which 
shall he do.-^ Surely the normal, healthy boy will naturally 
do the former; it is only when he is older and can appreciate 
what past work and present fatigue and sacrifice for him, 
on the part of his mother, mean that he can choose of his 
own accord to deny himself and do the less tasteful thing. 
The exercise of will power depends, therefore, in the first 
place upon information or knowledge. Until a child has 
had sufficient experience he cannot choose intelligently. 
In the second place, exercise of the will depends upon an 
attitude of thoughtfulness toward the problem of the mo- 
ment. A child may have had never so much experience, 
but if he has never reacted thoughtfully to such experiences 
he cannot be in any position to exercise his will power. 
Given these two conditions, experience and thoughtful 
reaction to it, and provided the environmental forces have 
been right and the habits formed in consequence wise, the 
beneficent exercise of will is inevitable. The child so pos- 
sessed and so actuated cannot but act wisely and well, pro- 
vided of course he does act and is not content to "dream 
noble deeds all day long." 

Stages in Moral Development, (a) Infancy. Infancy, as 
we noted above, is the non-moral stage. The experience of 
the child is so limited and his abilities and possibilities of 
habit-forming so restricted within very narrow range that 
there is little positive morality or negative morality likely. 

{h) Early childhood. In early childhood, that is, previous 
to the school age of the child, there is still little opportunity 
for any special development of the moral nature. The 
social environment in which the child moves is but the 
environment of the home; the great outer world has not 
yet cast its spell about him either for good or for bad. But 
the foundations are being laid during this period, and the 
home which fails to surround the children with good influ- 



286 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

ence and example will discover to its sorrow later on that 
an irreparable injury has been done. Right or wrong during 
the period of early childhood is largely, as Waddle suggests, 
what is permitted or forbidden. The will which rules the 
child's action is not his own, but his father's and his moth- 
er's and that of his brothers and sisters. Beyond this his 
own actions seldom extend. 

(c) Later childhood. Waddle speaks of this third stage 
in the evolution of the child's moral nature as a sort of trans- 
ition between the earlier period of doing what one is told 
and the subsequent one of doing what one himself feels to 
be right. It is an age of " verbal morality " wherein children 
can very glibly cover up their actual motives and feelings 
with a semblance of genuine morality. There are certain 
things which the child now habitually does because he feels 
them to be right, or avoids doing because he feels them to be 
wrong, such, for example, as being polite in the presence 
of guests, or the inhibiting of the same amount of close 
intimacy between the sexes as distinct from the earlier 
thoughtlessness in this respect. And yet, there is no real 
standard of morality in this period. The same child will 
tell an untruth to another child or to some one whom he 
chances not to like, who would not think of deceiving his 
own mother. His moral values are relative rather than ab- 
solute. He has not yet reached the stage where he can ap- 
preciate truth and virtue for truth's and virtue's sakes. 

{d) Adolescence. Now comes the dawning of the real moral 
self and of the personal values of ethical relationships. It is 
the very important period of life in which the instincts, 
not yet entirely in the control of wise and proper habits, and 
the dawning conscience, wage out an often bitter warfare 
with one another, with the result that either the one or the 
other wins. It is the one period of life above all others in 
which the gravest dangers to the future moral code of the 
individual lurk. Inasmuch, however, as we are shortly to 
devote an entire lesson to a study of this period, we shall 
not discuss it further here. 



WILL AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT 287 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Go hastily through a copy of the old New England Primer, or some 
other early textbook for young children, and note the emphasis which 
is placed upon the doctrine of human depravity. Also, see if you 
can find in Wordsworth any poem which stresses the original per- 
fection of children. 

2. Do you know personally of any cases in which the moral nature of a 
child has been unfavorably influenced by the social environment in 
which he lived? 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Do you believe that we should introduce into our schools definite 
moral instruction, or is it yoiu* opinion that incidental or indirect in- 
struction of this sort should be sufficient? 

2. Is there necessarily any relationship between moral instruction and 
religious instruction? Ought there to be religious instruction in the 
public schools? 

3. The instincts of ownership, curiosity, and the Wanderlust are among 
those inborn tendencies which are more commonly uncontrolled in 
childhood, and hence lead often to great moral danger. Should the 
school make special effort to provide normal satisfaction for these 
instincts? In what ways might this be possible? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Angell, J. R. Psychology, chaps. 20, 21, and 22. 

2. Betts, G. H. The Mind and its Education, chap. 17. 

3. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Studies in Psychology, chap. 8. 

4. . Imagination and its Place in Education, chap. 14. 

5. Waddle, C. W. Introduction to Child Psychology, chap. 9. 



LESSON 40 
THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 



« 



What juvenile delinquency is. You have doubtless very 
frequently seen in the daily press accounts of boys, and 
sometimes of girls, whose actions have been such as to bring 
them into the disfavor of society. Petty theft, injury to 
property, rowdyism, and the depredations of badly con- 
stituted gangs are among the activities which are perhaps 
most frequently entered upon by the delinquent. For the 
adult who had offended society and broken its laws in such 
ways as these ordinarily a prison sentence would be pro- 
nounced, and he would be considered a criminal by his fel- 
lows. When, however, the existing laws and customs are 
broken by a younger person, i.e., a person who is, in most 
states, under sixteen years of age, the term "juvenile de- 
linquent" is applied to him. "Juvenile" because he (or 
she) is still a youth; "delinquent" because such an offender 
has literally been "left behind" in his moral development. 
Whereas other boys and girls have passed through child- 
hood and into youth without actually trespassing seriously 
upon any law, the juvenile delinquent has failed to so do, 
with the result that his moral nature has suffered, and he 
has been "left behind" in his normal evolution by his more 
conforming fellows. 

Until somewhat recently, however, even the youthful 
law-breaker was looked upon as a criminal and so treated 
by society. He was ordinarily placed under restraint in 
an institution, and thus segregated from the group in order 
that his contaminating influence might not be exercised 
upon other children. The results of such a system of dis- 
cipline obviously failed to be very salutary upon the moral 
development of the youth so placed under restraint, for 
he was thrown necessarily in contact with other law-break- 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 289 

ers, often adult criminals of the most vicious sort, with the 
result that, far from being made over into a good citizen, 
he imbibed from the hardened offenders ideals and atti- 
tudes toward society which impelled him, upon his release 
at the expiration of his sentence, to degenerate into the life 
and manner of living of the confirmed criminal. Many a 
child who, because of breaking one of society's laws has been 
thrown thus in contact with men of hopeless degeneracy, 
has from such intimate association learned for the first time 
to rebel against society and the moral law, and has left 
prison with a heart hardened to every fine principle and 
every lofty ambition. It has been the discovery of this 
unfortunate influence upon the youthful criminal that has 
led society in recent years to refrain from calling such an 
offender a "criminal," and from placing him in some penal 
institution where his tendencies toward crime would find 
additional nurture by the associations there formed. Con- 
sequently, your modern youthful law-breaker is termed a 
"juvenile delinquent," and in most cases is not actually 
placed under constraint. 

Improper stimuli. We have referred continually in this 
book to the inevitable relationship between the stimulus 
and the response. The explanation of the cause of juvenile 
delinquency lies in this same relationship. If the stimuli 
which make up the social environment of the child are 
vicious and encourage offenses, the results are inevitable. 
Social imitation, as we have seen, is a social necessity. If 
the examples furnished by parents and gang and books 
and amusements be unsalutary, unsalutary responses will 
tend to result. If the environment of the child contains a 
Fagin, the habits and manner of living peculiar to Fagin 
will fasten themselves upon nine out of ten children. Where 
does the boy learn to pick pockets or to commit crimes 
against the person save by imitating the bad example rather 
than the good of his environment? If an environment fails 
to modify and redirect properly the racial heritage of instincts 
which exist so strongly in every child, potential criminality 



290 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

will be the logical sequel. Swift contends rightly that "a 
period of savagery and semi-criminality is normal for all 
healthy boys," the only reason that not all boys continue 
therein being due to differences of environment, the child 
of the vicious environment tending to be vicious, while the 
child of the healthy environment tends away from it. Jane 
Addams refers to juvenile delinquency as "instincts gone 
wrong"; i.e., because the normal instincts of play and self- 
activity, etc., find no opportunity for normal expression, 
they seek it in abnormal and therefore usually vicious ways. 
Miss Addams quotes the following list of charges, as they 
appeared in order in the Juvenile Court of Chicago: 

1. Building fires along the railroad tracks. 

2. Flagging trains. 

3. Throwing stones at moving trains. 

4. Shooting at the actors in the Olympic Theater with sling- 
shots. 

5. Breaking signal lights on the railroad. 

6. Stealing oil barrels from the railroad to make a fire. 

7. Taking waste from an axle-box and burning it upon the 
tracks. 

8. Turning the switch and running the street car oflf the track. 

9. Staying away from homes to sleep in barns. 

10. Setting fire to a barn to see the fire engines come up the 
street. 

11. Knocking down signs. 

12. Cutting a Western Union cable. 

Surely nothing here save "instincts gone wrong"! The 
instincts of general physical activity, of play, of migration, 
of curiosity, etc., failed in the case of those delinquents to 
have normal, happy expression, hence they took the vicious 
route to find satisfaction for themselves. It is hard to see 
how a child who had had opportunities for normal play 
could have cared to commit the acts here enumerated. 
Give the city child his playground and see the beneficial 
results in the law-abidingness of the boys and girls! 

The defective delinquent. The term "defective delin- 
quent" is applied to those juvenile law-breakers who are 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 291 

mentally defective. Exactly what part feeble-mindedness 
or mental abnormality plays in crime we do not yet know. 
A considerable number of studies of the defective delin- 
quent and the defective adult criminal have been reported, 
however, all of them indicating a marked correlation be- 
tween the mental condition and the moral condition of any 
given person. Goddard states that mental defectiveness is 
hereditary in sixty-five to seventy -five percent of the cases; 
other investigators incline toward much the same opinion. 
The feeble-minded child is lacking in ability to foresee the 
results of his deeds either to society, to the person injured, 
or to himself. His moral judgment is almost nil, and very 
often entirely so. In him the lower instincts are of full 
strength, without the inhibitions existing whereby to set 
back fires to them, so that to desire means usually to carry 
out, and some of the most heinous of all crimes committed 
are those perpetrated by idiots and imbeciles utterly with- 
out moral sense. In many instances nowadays the State 
refuses to take the life of a criminal who has committed 
murder if it can be established that the evil-doer was morally 
and mentally incompetent to judge of the enormity of his 
crime, or perhaps indeed to view it as a crime while con- 
templating it. Recent studies show insanity and epilepsy 
in the parents to be heritable, and that they result often in 
delinquency of the children of such parentage. Alcoholism 
and abnormal sexual tendencies may also predispose to de- 
linquency. 

Modern methods of dealing with delinquents. We 
stated above that the older attitude toward the youthful 
offender did not differ materially from that toward the adult 
criminal. Both were breakers of the laws which society 
had formulated whereby to protect itself from the evil pas- 
sions of the few who are criminally inclined in every age. 
Hence the same sort of treatment at the hands of the law 
was vouchsafed to both the new and the confirmed offender, 
with the unfortunate results stated. The chief reason for 
this earlier attitude of society is to be sought in the igno- 



292 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

ranee which prevailed as to the real nature of children. The 
older judges and prosecutors failed to understand that every 
offender against the law is the victim of circumstance, and 
that the only way to reform him is to surround him with 
the proper, positive environment before it is too late. The 
proper environment does not consist of the nondescript 
criminals in the average penal institution, whose example 
and conversation will but confirm and strengthen the youth 
in his waywardness. Hence in modern times society looks 
with disfavor upon such disposition of its juvenile delin- 
quents. 

Modern disposition of youthful offenders, therefore, bears 
always in mind the nature of children, the inevitableness 
with which response follows stimulus, and the relative 
plasticity of children's morals, and looks upon each delin- 
quent as an individual problem. The sort of discipline 
therefore meted out in any given case, according to modern 
conceptions of justice, will be the discipline which will off- 
set or counteract the vicious tendencies of the individual, 
and encourage within him the expression of the more posi- 
tive, constructive virtues. Hence, instead of placing the 
delinquent child in jail, or even in a reform school (called 
by Miss Madeleine Z. Doty a "deform" school), the juve- 
nile court judge, who, by the way, differs from the ordinary 
judge by being a child psychologist, as well as a believer in 
and lover of children, endeavors to enlist the sympathetic 
attitude of the home and the employer and perhaps the 
neighbors of the wayward child, to the end that the en- 
vironmental influences may be made better. In some cases 
he may deem it necessary to place a child on probation, that 
is, assign a special officer to have oversight of a youth's as- 
sociations, who shall be held also responsible for his good 
behavior and for constructive efforts in his behalf. Failing 
to respond to such generous treatment, and to the oppor 
tunities offered by "another chance," the delinquent may 
have to be committed to a reform school where at least he 
will be unable to harm society further, and where more con- 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 293 

centrated efforts at reform may result happily for the of- 
fender. It is the experience of most cities where juvenile 
courts have been established and where such procedure has 
been inaugurated, that only a relatively small percentage 
of delinquents require commitment to a reform or correc- 
tive institution. Still, owing to hereditary predisposition 
or to particularly vicious and long-standing associations of 
childhood and youth, many delinquents can only be dealt 
with in this more drastic manner. In other words, the whole 
ideal of the modern attitude toward the delinquent is to 
make over through sympathetic treatment and intelligent 
guardianship the boy or girl who has become the victim of 
a bad environment, or who is the innocent victim of a bad 
heredity. For the former there is great hope; for the latter, 
less. 

Environmental factors in delinquency. Among the en- 
vironmental factors which may make for delinquency in 
children may be mentioned poverty and poor economic 
conditions of the home, failure of the home to manifest 
the proper oversight and supervision of its childrens' ac- 
tivities and amusements, etc., the associations of child 
labor and the so-called "street trades," the influence of 
bad gangs, etc. Each one of these factors may be sufficient 
to undermine the morals of a none-too-well-endowed child, 
and even of children of fine parentage. If two or several 
such influences as these operate in combination upon the 
resistance power of a child the outcome is all but inevitable. 
Take the first of these factors for example — the child now- 
adays who has no spending money and who finds little of the 
comforts common to other children in his home or who, 
coming from a good home which exercises but little author- 
ity and solicitude for its children, is free to amuse himself 
as he sees fit, drifts easily into dissipation and waywardness 
of some sort or other. If the economic conditions of the 
family are such that the child is compelled to go to work 
at a tender age the potentialities of his environment are al- 
most inevitable, and it is a fact well established by statistics 



294 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

that " among the young delinquents there are two or three 
times as many persons following a trade as among non-de- 
linquents." One investigator concludes that approximately 
sixty per cent of the working delinquents are engaged in 
the street trades alone. Of the influence exerted upon the 
plastic minds and morals of children by bad gangs, and of 
the tremendous influence exerted by the habitual forms of 
amusement which they seek, we have already said enough. 
Sufiice it here to add merely that of all the factors making up 
the environment of the child the associates and the amuse- 
ments are without doubt the most important in the influ- 
ence which they exert. 

Nature of offenses. Some years ago President Hall ar- 
ranged a table on the basis of the returns to the Census 
of 1890, which showed the nature and distribution of the 
offenses of children and youths of both sexes who were 
committed to reform schools between the ages of seven 
and twenty-one years. The order of greatest frequency he 
found to be incorrigibility, petty larceny, vagrancy, lar- 
ceny, burglary, truancy, disorderly conduct, assaults, etc. 
Waddle has painted for us a very good picture of the typical 
delinquent, thus: 

As he appears in our juvenile courts the country over, the typi- 
cal delinquent is a boy (eight or nine times out of ten); he is ap- 
proximately fifteen years old; is slightly under the normal height 
and weight for his age; may have one or more physical defects of 
a fairly serious sort, but is probably not more seriously defective 
than the average public school child (nine times out of ten); his 
schooling has been more or less interfered with by various causes; 
his intelligence is normal (three times out of four), although he 
may be a dull-normal or border-land case; he has been and prob- 
ably still is engaged in some form of the street trades or other 
occupation for gain; he does not care much for school, and will 
quit as soon as the law allows, if he has not already done so; he is 
a member of a gang; is native-born of native-born parents; his 
home ranks somewhere between the very poor and that of the 
comfortable working class; the chances are even that one parent 
is dead, has deserted, or that the parents have separated, and that 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 295 

one parent is addicted to drink; if there are several other children 
in the family he has one brother or sister who is delinquent; the 
charge against him includes some sort of theft, and he has been 
guilty of more than one offense; his condition is due one-fourth to 
family inheritance and three-fourths to environmental causes, of 
which the influence of his gang is an important element. . . . 

Such is the typical delinquent child. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Look up some of the chief facts concerning the organization and work 
of the juvenile courts. Judge Lindsey's Denver coiu-t will prove a 
very interesting topic to investigate. 

2. Report to class any case of juvenile delinquency which you may 
know. If possible try to analyze the cause. What remedies are 
being tried.'' Are they wise ones? 

3. Study the latest report of your own local reform school. If possible, 
make a visit to the institution and observe something of the ideals 
which appear to be in evidence. Question the superintendent con- 
cerning the nature of the offenses which the inmates have committed. 

4. Read and report upon two chapters in Jane Addams's Spirit of Youth 
and the City Streets, also two chapters from Jacob Riis's How the 
Other Half Lives. 

5. Make a study of your own community, and try to form an intelligent 
conclusion as to whether or not there are ample facilities provided to 
keep young people out of mischief. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Addams, Jane. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, chap. 3, 

2. Groszmann, M. P. The Exceptional Child, chap. 10. 

3. Mangold, G. B. Child Problems, book 4, pp. 210-90. 

4. Waddle, C. W. Introduction to Child Psychology, chap. 9. 



LESSON 41 
THE SUB-NORMAL CHILD 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. \^^lethe^ any of the children appear to be retarded. Ques- 
tion the teacher concerning any such children observed. 
Note any peculiar physical or mental characteristics which 
such children manifest. 

2. Any indications that the presence in the grade of a dis- 
tinctly and definitely sub-normal child interferes with the 
progress of the other pupils or with the work of the teacher. 

3. Ascertain from the teacher whether any children in the room 
have been tested by the Binet, or other tests, for the purpose 
of determining their mental age. 

Normality a relative term. It is very likely true that you 
have been accustomed to think of all people as being divisi- 
ble mentally into two classes — the normal and the feeble- 
minded. Such, however, is not the case. It is rather the 
fact of the matter that every person in the world ranks some- 
where upon a scale whose one limit is idiocy and whose other 
limit is genius. The great mass of mankind will rank some- 
where in the middle portion of the scale, according to the 
law of deviation from the normal which we discussed when 
we were studying heredity. But there will be a very large 
number whose place will fall somewhere between the idiocy 
extreme and the average, on the one hand, and between the 
genius extreme and the average, on the other. Normality 
is, in other words, but a relative term. Most of us are more 
normal than we are sub- or ab-normal, and so we pass as nor- 
mals. Others are more abnormal than normal, hence they 
pass for abnormals. It has been said that all of us are ab- 
normal in some particulars, which statement is very likely 
true; since, however, those respects in which we are normal 
outweigh those in which we are abnormal, we think of our- 
selves as normals, and we are deemed by our fellows to be 



THE SUB-NORMAL CHILD 297 

such. Can you think of any respect in which you are not 
normal? Thus, the law of deviation from the average in 
the matter of mental capacity holds true of the individual, 
just as it does for the mass of individuals. It is important 
to be familiar with this idea of the relativity of normality 
before we undertake a discussion of the mentality of chil- 
dren. 

An important distinction. In your visits among the 
schools of your city your attention has no doubt been called 
frequently to certain of the children whose reactions did 
not appear like those of other children. Perhaps they were 
more restless, or were unable to pay attention to the teacher, 
or failed to take any intelligent part in the lesson, or were 
not able to learn or interpret lessons taught. It may have 
been that their facial expressions were dull and gross, that 
their movements were awkward and ungainly, that their 
natural interests did not appear to be keen like those of 
their fellows. Possibly, too, you were conscious of the fact 
that the teacher either endeavored to pay special attention 
to such children, or perhaps tended to neglect them. You 
were aware that the other children in the room appeared to 
"take for granted" these sluggish and backward children, 
and manifested little interest in or solicitation for their 
feeble attempts at participation in the work of the school- 
room and the playground. 

It may be that you made the very serious mistake of 
cataloguing in your own thoughts such children who devi- 
ated so markedly and conspicuously from the average as 
feeble-minded. If so, then you did them an injustice, inas- 
much as you have no right to look upon any child as sub- 
normal until he has been definitely proved to be such. An 
important distinction has to be made between the child 
who is actually deficient mentally, and the child who is 
merely retarded because of some environmental and reme- 
diable cause. The former child can profit relatively little 
if anything at all from the associations of the schoolroom; 
the latter may profit from them to the fullest degree, pro- 



298 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

vided his environmental obstacles and hindrances be re- 
moved. It is with the former type of child that this lesson 
has to do. However, it will be well before turning our at- 
tention to the feeble-minded child to pause to gain a little 
clearer idea of the child who is retarded in his school work, 
not because of any inherent sub-normality, but rather as a 
result of unfortunate and remediable environmental influ- 
ence. 

Some of the more common environmental factors which 
make for retardation of the pupil include unfamiliarity 
with the English language; frequent or severe illness which 
necessitates a great deal of absence from school; irregular 
attendance, due to causes other than illness, such for ex- 
ample as the moving of the family from place to place, 
outside work, etc. The child, for example, who has lan- 
guage difiiculties, another tongue than the English being 
used in the home by foreign-born parents, may be several 
grades behind where he should be for his age. He finds it 
difficult to understand the teacher, and more difficult still 
to express himself to her. Consequently he is classified 
as a retarded pupil. How absurd it would be to classify 
him as a sub-normal! So with children who because of 
illness or some other condition which makes it necessary 
for them to lose considerable portions of the school year; 
they are necessarily retarded, for those children of equal 
age whose attendance has been regular will be from a half 
to one, two, or perhaps three grades ahead of them. How 
absurd it would be to term such sub-normal! Every one of 
the possible causes of retardation — with the sole exception 
of actual mental deficiency — is capable of being ruled 
out if the environment be properly manipulated to that end. 
The child who is held back because of any one of them, 
or because of several of them operating simultaneously, is 
the victim of extraneous circumstance and may be abso- 
lutely and completely normal — or even brilliant — men- 
tally. 

Causes of mental defectiveness. In this lesson, how- 



THE SUB-NORMAL CHILD 299 

ever, we are to consider only those children who are re- 
tarded in their school work by actual mental deficiency, 
and for whom consequently little can be done in the way of 
helping them to advance like other children through the 
grades. There are two general causes of feeble-mindedness: 
(1) heredity, and (2) accident. Most cases of defectiveness 
in children are due to the former influence. You recall the 
story of the Kallikak family, about whom we studied in our 
discussion of heredity, and you recall also that mental de- 
ficiencies are hereditable. In general it may be said that 
parental lines in which there exist traces of insanity or epi- 
lepsy or confirmed alcoholism are likely to pass down in 
their posterity children whose mental powers are deficient. 
It is estimated that some ninety per cent of all defectives 
are deficient because of hereditary influences. Nervous dis- 
order of any marked sort in parentage is likely to be re- 
flected in offspring, as is also certain physical defectiveness, 
such for example as sex diseases. The child of syphilitic 
parents may be either physically degenerate, or mentally so, 
or both. The other ten per cent of mental defectiveness 
is due to such accidental causes as alcoholism of the mother 
during pregnancy, injuries of the head received either be- 
fore, during, or after birth; defective glandular action which 
interferes with nutrition and normal physical growth; and 
toxins resulting from some disease suffered in early life. 
Obviously these latter causes of mental defect are acci- 
dental, rather than hereditary. 

Classification of defectives. The term feeble-mindedness 
tells us nothing as to the degree of mental defectiveness 
which a child may have. It is rather a somewhat generic 
word including in its scope all grades of deficiency from the 
lowest to the highest. We said above that normality is a 
relative term; it follows from this that sub-normality is 
likewise a relative term, and hence it is desirable to have 
a nomenclature applicable to all forms or stages of the 
defect. When we say "feeble-minded" we are likely to 
mean only those people who are very sub-normal; i.e., idi- 



300 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

otic. The term anient has been somewhat recently applied 
to denote mental deviation from the normal on the lower 
side of the scale, and the term amentia is defined as "a state 
of mental defect from birth, or from early age, due to in- 
complete cerebral development, in consequence of which 
the person affected is unable to perform his duties as a mem- 
ber of society in the position of life to which he is born."^ 
Feeble-mindedness, or amentia (Latin: a and mens: "off 
in mind"), is further divisible into three degrees, depending 
upon the relative inability of the person "to perform his 
duties . . ." etc. You have certainly observed that there 
are some people who are more able to care for themselves 
and their families than are others, while you would perhaps 
hesitate to think of them as absolutely normal people. The 
lowest degree of amentia is known as idiocy. The idiot 
is so defective that he is utterly unable to guard himself from 
common physical dangers; his mentality has been defined 
as not being in excess of that of a two-year-old infant, how- 
ever old he might live to be. The next higher in the scale of 
amentia is the imbecile. An imbecile is considered to be 
one who, while able to guard himself from the physical 
dangers which threaten him, is quite unable to earn his own 
living; his mental age does not exceed perhaps that of a 
seven-year-old child, however old he may live to be. High- 
est in the scale of amentia comes the so-called moron. A 
moron is able with proper training and oversight to earn 
his own living, to protect himself from common dangers, but 
is at the same time totally unable to compete with normal 
people in the management of his affairs and in the ordering 
of his life. His mental age is perhaps that of a twelve-year- 
old child, and never goes beyond that, however long he may 
live. 

Above this stage there ensues, on the scale of normality- 
abnormality, a condition which may be termed the border- 
land. Persons belonging at this point on the scale are not 
positively aments, nor are they quite normal. Or, looking 
1 After Tredgold. 



THE SUB-NORMAL CHILD 301 

at it from the point of view of normality, they are not posi- 
tively normal, nor are they quite abnormal. Beyond this 
border-land of normality ensue all the varying degrees of 
strict normality, ranging upward to the genius or the highly 
talented person. Somewhere on the scale every person 
ever born into the world will finally become fixed, those who 
are by heredity or accident positively deficient coming to 
their point very quickly, the rest of the people of the world 
always having potentialities and possibilities of improve- 
ment and hence attaining a higher place upon the scale. In 
this lesson we are not to concern ourselves with the super- 
normal child, nor the child whose mentality ranks him more 
nearly at the genius end of the scale than at the other. It 
is important, however, that you appreciate that for every 
ament there is a corresponding super-normal, relatively 
speaking, and that you will find in the schoolrooms where 
you teach not only children of the former mental condition, 
but also a few of the latter. 

Testing the mentality of children. Suppose a teacher has 
among her pupils in the fourth grade (the average age being 
approximately ten years) one child who is below grade; 
that is, who falls short of the attainments of the average 
children in the class. Naturally she desires to know what 
the reason is for his backwardness, in order that she may 
know how to deal with him. If he be merely retarded be- 
cause of some physical or environmental factor which is 
capable of remedy or correction, it will be highly unjust for 
her to deem the child to be an ament. If, on the other 
hand, he be positively deficient mentally she should know 
that, too, in order that she may not continue longer to 
deprive the normal pupils of her time and attention. If 
the child is a sub-normal the place for him is in the special 
class, or the ungraded class, which most school systems now 
provide for such children who cannot do the work required 
in the system, and where they may receive the full benefit 
of expert teaching. Hence the matter of determining as 
accurately as possible the general intelligence of such chil- 



302 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORI^IAL SCHOOLS 

dren as are below grade becomes a positive necessity if 
justice is to be done both the normal and the sub-normal 
pupils. This becomes particularly indispensable in the case 
of those children who have been physically and medically 
examined and in whom no bodily deficiencies are found, and 
yet who remain one, two, and perhaps three years retarded. 
The Binet tests. Fortunately there has been worked 
out in recent years a series of mental tests which are in- 
tended to establish more or less exactly what the mental 
age of the child is. He may be ten years old by the cal- 
endar (chronological age), and yet be no more than six 
mentally (psychological, or mental age). Or again, he 
may be ten years old chronologically and yet have a mental 
age of eleven or twelve. The working out of tests to de- 
termine the mental age of children we owe originally to 
two French investigators, Binet and Simon. These are 
usually referred to as the Binet tests. ^ The tests are made 
up of a somewhat extended series of tests or problems, 
graded according to the average abilities of normal children 
in any age from three years up to fifteen. The tests were 
arranged by the investigators in the order of difficulty, 
after trying them out upon a great many normal children 
between the ages stated. If, for example, two thirds or 
three fourths of all five-year-olds were able to solve a given 
problem, that problem was put down by Binet as a problem 
which five-year-old children of normal intelligence should 
be able to answer correctly, the inference being that those 
five-year-olds who could not solve it were of a mental age 
lower than five years. Naturally a single problem would 
not be sufficient to warrant any conclusion as to mental 
age; hence Binet arranged five tests for each age-year (ex- 
cepting age-year four, which had but four problems) from 
three up to and including fifteen, with an added list of five 
for adults, making a total of fifty-four tests in all. The 
nature of the problems which were originated is such that 
no attempt is made to test any specific ability of a child, 
* Pronounced Bee-nay. 



THE SUB-NORMAL CHILD 303 

but rather his general intelligence. They appeal to the in- 
nate ingenuity and reasoning powers of the child rather 
than to his lower sensory processes. 

The Stanford Revision. The work of Binet was obvi- 
ously not altogether satisfactory; no first stage in the de- 
velopment of any scientific process can be entirely adequate. 
Hence there have been several attempts to revise and im- 
prove and adapt to American children the tests which Binet 
originated. Perhaps the one revision most generally in use 
in this country to-day among psychological investigators 
is the so-called Stanford Revision of the Binet Tests. It is 
the result of the labors of Dr. Lewis M. Terman, of Leland 
Stanford, Jr., University, whence it derives its name. With 
his collaborators. Dr. Terman was led to modify somewhat, 
as a result of an extended use of the original tests, some of 
Binet's tests, to shift several of the problems down one or 
more years, to eliminate some of them entirely, and to sub- 
stitute several new ones. As a result, the Stanford Revision 
as used at the present time contains ninety tests, of which 
six occur at each age level from three to ten, eight at twelve 
years, six at fourteen, six at "average adult," six at "su- 
perior adult," and sixteen alternative tests (the latter to be 
used only when "one or more of the regular tests have been 
rendered by coaching or otherwise undesirable"). 

As one glances over the tests provided, he will note that 
the problems call for general intelligence, for reasoning abil- 
ity, for ability to pay attention, etc., that is, they are de- 
signed to test general mental ability and not special powers. 
The nature of the testing is such that only trained exam- 
iners should be employed to give the tests to children with 
the purpose of determining their mental age. While many 
teachers have learned to apply them, the teacher should 
by no means consider herself capable of evaluating the re- 
sults in any case until she has had a great deal of experi- 
ence in their use. It would be absurd for a person who was 
acquainted only in a casual way with anatomy and surgery 
to proceed to perform surgical operations in which a pa- 



304 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

tient's life was at stake. Likewise it would be absurd for 
the ordinary teacher with a mere passing knowledge of men- 
tal testing to attempt to diagnose the mentality of children. 
Perfect familiarity with the materials, a very keen judgment, 
and much ingenuity are necessary in the administering of 
the tests. 

Tests for the ninth yeaj. The following represent the 
six tests in the Stanford Revision for the ninth year, and 
are typical of the ninety in the whole series: 

{Six tests, value of each two months.) 

1. Date. (Day of week, month, day of month, year.) 

2. Weights. 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 grams to be placed in order. 
(Two or three results to be correct.) 

3. Makes change. (Two of three. No coins, paper or pencil.) 
10 less 4; 15 less 12; 25 less 4. 

4. Repeats 4 digits backwards. (One of three trials to be cor- 
rect.) 

5. Three words woven into a single sentence. (Two of three.) 
Boy, river, ball; work, money, men; desert, rivers, lakes. 

6. Rhymes. (Three rhymes for two of three words. One 
minute for each part.) 

Day, mill, spring. 

Alternative 1: Months. (Fifteen seconds and one error in 

naming.) 

Alternative 2: Stamps, give total value. 

The intelUgence quotient. Since there are six tests in 
each age group from III to X, each test in this part of the 
scale counts as two months toward mental age. A child, 
for example, passing all' the tests in year IX would be 
credited with twelve months; if he passed only four of them, 
he would be credited with but eight months. In group XII 
there are eight tests which, because year XI is omitted, 
have the value of three months each. Similarly, each of 
the six tests in XIV has a value of four months, year XIII 
being omitted. The calculation of a child's mental age is 
therefore a very simple matter. 

The rule is: (1) credit the subject with all the tests below the 
point where the exammation begins, and (2) add to this basal 



THE SUB-NORMAL CHILD 305 

credit two months for each test passed successfully up to and in- 
cluding year X, three months for each test passed in XII, and four 
months for each test passed in XIV. 

Let us suppose, for example, that a child ten years and 
seven months of age passes all the tests in VII, four in VIII, 
four in IX, and three in X. The total credits earned would 

be as follows: 

Years Months 

Credits presupposed (years 1 to 6) 6 

Credits earned in VII (6X2) 12 

Credits earned in VIII (4X2) 8 

Credits earned in IX (4X2) 8 

Credits earned in X (3X2) 6 

Total credits 8 years 10 months 

or 106 months 

The mental age of the child is, therefore, eight years and 
ten months. He appears to be retarded somewhat less than 
two years. But having discovered his mental age we are 
not in a position to compare him readily with other children 
until we have reduced our results to some standard form of ex- 
pression. The standard which psychologists have adopted 
for the expression of mental efficiency or deficiency is the 
intelligence quotient, usually written in the abbreviated 
form: I.Q. The intelligence quotient is found by dividing 
the mental age as revealed in the tests by the chronological 
age of the child. Thus, if the child tested above was aged 
ten years and seven months, by performing the process 

8 yrs. 10 mos. 

10 yrs. 7 mos. 
we shall derive the I.Q. In this case, the I.Q. of the child 
would be 106 divided by 127, or .76. 100 I.Q. would mean 
exactly average intelligence, although in actual practice 
examiners usually consider all children whose I.Q. falls 
between .95 and 105 as of average intelligence. Most chil- 
dren below .70 or .75 are classed as feeble-minded, while those 
much in excess of 105 may be regarded as above the average 
in intelligence. 





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308 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

Group intelligence tests. Before leaving the subject of 
mental testing, mention should be made of a still more 
recent development than the Binet tests in this field. The 
use of the Binet and other related tests is obviously limited 
in scope, inasmuch as but a single individual can be tested 
by one examiner at a time. The war brought psychologists 
face to face with the necessity of classifying large numbers 
of men on a mental basis in the briefest possible time. To 
meet this need, the examiners devised a variety of "group 
tests," so called, by which the number of individuals tested 
simultaneously was limited solely by the range of the ex- 
aminer's voice. More recently still, scores of adaptations 
of these army tests have been made by as many investi- 
gators for practical use in the schoolroom. For the most 
part thus far the range of group tests has not included chil- 
dren below the upper grades, although there are now avail- 
able several which are capable of being used in low grades. 

The group tests are designed, like the Binet tests, to diag- 
nose general intelligence rather than specific abilities. Fig. 
9 is from the Haggerty Intelligence Tests, and is typical of 
group tests in general. A manual of instructions and pro- 
cedure which accompanies all scales of this sort operates 
to rule out almost totally the personal equation of the ex- 
aminer, making the use of such intelligence tests purely a 
mechanical process on the part of the teacher, no special 
training in giving them being necessary. 

Educational or achievement tests. There is still another 
variety of test now commonly in use in progressive school 
systems. These are called educational, or achievement 
tests, as distinguished from intelligence tests. As their 
name implies, they are designed to measure the amount of 
knowledge or skill which a child may possess in any given 
curricular subject. Like the intelligence tests, they are 
carefully standardized by calculating as the standard of 
what a child in the sixth grade in arithmetic, for example, 
should be able to achieve, what extensive investigation has 
shown to be the average of the abilities of great numbers of 
children in the sixth grade in arithmetic. Their use, ob- 



THE SUB-NORMAL CHILD 309 

viously, places in the teacher's hands a means of deter- 
mining whether her children are up to the standard in abil- 
ity in arithmetic, etc., and if not, wherein their deficiencies 
consist. They are a sort of educational yard-stick which 
has been now sufficiently developed to include the measure- 
ment of abilities in nearly all the school subjects. Fig. 10 
represents a section of the Ayres Handwriting Scale. The 
complete scale includes three types of handwriting, having 
each a value of 20, 30, 40, etc., up to 90. Only the lower 
(20) and upper (90) limits are shown in Fig. 10. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Do you know of any children or grown-ups whose mentality appears 
to be somewhat low? Have any steps been taken to ascertain defi- 
nitely whether they are aments, or merely retarded because of en- 
vironmental causes? 

2. Report to class upon chapter 1 and chapter 3 of Terman's The Meas- 
urement of Intelligence. 

3. Confer with some teacher in the elementary schools, and question her 
as to the number of retarded pupils there are in her room. If possible, 
have her point out to you at least one child who is retarded. Obtain 
as much information as possible as to the probable cause of his re- 
tardation. Report the results of your study to class. 

4. If possible, visit an ungraded room or a special school and observe 
the behavior of the children, reporting your impressions in class. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Holmes, A. Backward Children, chaps. 1, 2 and 3. 

2. Terman, L. M. The Intelligence of School Children. 

3. Terman, L. M. The Measurement of Intelligence, chaps. 1 and 2. 

4. Whipple, G. M. Manual of Mental and Physical Tests, vol. 2. 

MATERIALS FOR MENTAL TESTING 

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachusetts, will supply all the 
printed material used in the Stanford Revision of the Binet tests. 

Record booklets for recording results of the Binet testing are supplied 
in packages of 25, and may be ordered of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
The volume by Dr. Terman, The Measurement of Intelligence, is indis- 
pensable to any one who wishes to learn to apply the intelligence tests. 
It gives complete and detailed instructions as to the procedure in admin- 
istering every one of the ninety tests. 

C. H. Stoelting & Company, 3037 Carroll Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 
will supply the five weights for tests IX-2 and V-1, and also the Healy- 
Fernald Construction Puzzle used in test X. 





20 


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Fig. 10. A PORTION OF THE " GETTYSBURG EDITION" OF THE AYRES 

HANDWRITING SCALE 

Reproduced in part with the special permission of Dr. Ayres and of the Russell 

Sage Foundation 



90 

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C<nrd Jl/dlorC tcrcvu C<i/iAe yd'Cvrx^ QAX. 









Fig. 10. A PORTION OF THE " GETTYSBURG EDITION " OF 

THE AYRES HANDWRITING SCALE 

Reproduced in part with the special permission of Dr. Ayres and of the 

Russell Sage Foundation 



LESSON 42 
THE GIFTED CHILD 
What to look for in the observation 'period: 

1. Whether any children in the same grade appear to be brighter 
than others. Question the teacher concernmg any such 
children observed. Note any peculiar physical or mental 
characteristics which such children manifest. 

2. If the room in which you observe chances to include children 
of several nationalities, attempt to discover any racial dif- 
ferences in brightness among them. Do any of them belong 
to the lower social classes.'' 

3. If possible, visit a special class for bright pupils and compare 
the work done, and the attitude and response of the pupils, 
with those in the regular grades where chronological age is 
the chief basis of grading. 

4. \Miether brightness in arithmetic goes with brightness in 
grammar; or brightness in composition with brightness in 
drawing, etc. Note any case in which unusual talent in any 
one subject is manifested. 

Earmarks of the bright pupil. In our last lesson we were 
concerned especially with those children who rank on the 
lower end of the normality-abnormality scale and who are, 
hence, properly termed suh-normal or dull. In this lesson 
we are to turn our attention to the upper end of the scale 
and study those children who are mentally superior, and 
who are termed super-normal, or bright, or accelerated. In 
times past we have concerned ourselves more with the 
former than with the latter type of child, partly because the 
needs of the inferior child were obviously so much greater 
if he was to be turned out at the end of the school age any- 
thing like a fair product of the educational system, and 
partly because we knew so little concerning the intellectual 
thirst of the superior child. Then, too, the bright children 
in the schoolroom always conduct themselves tolerably 



TKE GIFTED CHILD 313 

creditably; consequently they may be left largely to them- 
selves by teachers who are hard put to it to keep the dull- 
ards in line with the average. 

The gifted child is to be found in the school population of 
any system in approximately the same numbers as the dull 
one. In your observing from time to time you have noted 
again and again the brighter faces, the more alert and eager 
expressions, the better control of movements, the greater 
readiness and intelligence of responses, the nicer reasoning, 
the more vivid imagination, the deeper intellectual curios- 
ity, the better memories and clearer understandings which 
ordinarily differentiate bright children from dull. You 
have observed how prone the teacher was to call twenty 
times during the period upon bright Johnnie or bright Sue, 
whose hands were so eagerly upraised and whose responses 
proved so satisfactory, while perhaps she all but disregarded 
dull Johnnie and dull Sue, who sat unresponsive through- 
out the entire lesson. If you were anything of an introspec- 
tionist, you no doubt appreciated keenly the mental process 
of the teacher who during all this time was compelled to 
make a lesson "go" to the satisfaction of visitors, handi- 
capped constantly by the poor efforts of those children who 
were less capable mentally than the average and the super- 
average. 

However, it is not always true that the brighter children 
actually appear to be the brighter in the schoolroom, and 
herein lies the tragedy of much of our school grading. Too 
often a child of unusual intellect, tiring of being held back 
at the pace of the mediocre when he longs to proceed twice 
as rapidly, loses that absorbing interest which formerly 
possessed him and becomes, to all appearances, a dull and 
unpromising scholar. Such was the case of a boy in the 
Berkeley, California, school system who had passed up 
through the lower grades with his fellows until he reached 
the age of twelve years. One day the teacher directed her 
children to note down on paper all the words in a rather 
difficult reading selection which they did not know. At 



314 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

the end of the assigned task, this twelve-year-old, whom we 
may call Harry, presented a perfectly blank piece of paper 
to his teacher. Forthwith she demanded an explanation 
of his failure to perform the task required. Harry insisted 
that he knew all the words in the selection. The teacher, 
long out of sorts with the boy, upbraided him for untruth- 
fulness and laziness and was much incensed at his be- 
havior. Sometime afterward Harry was examined with the 
Binet tests, and, though twelve years old chronologically, 
he proved to have the mental age of a child of sixteen years 
and two months! In other words, he was accelerated more 
than four years, and instead of being in the fifth grade should 
have been in the first year of high school. No wonder that 
he had been often listless and lackadaisical in his school- 
room work; no wonder that he lost all interest in studying 
and was winning by his negligence and idleness the dis- 
approval and censure of his teacher. You have seen a dog, 
brimful of energy and life, tugging at his leash in order to 
win his freedom and leap ofif madly and ecstatically to re- 
lease his pent-up energies. The trouble with Harry was 
that he had been too long held in an intellectual leash. 
Consumed by eagerness to run at a rapid intellectual pace, 
he was yet restrained by the system, and hence gradually 
not only ceased to tug at his halter but ended by yielding 
absolutely to its constraint. 

There are a great many school children hke Harry whose 
whole future attitude toward and success in life are jeopard- 
ized because their intellectual talents are either never dis- 
covered or else are never given the favorable environment 
for development. Society can ill afford to risk losing the 
contributions w^hich men and women of talent might make 
to it if they were given early and ample opportunity to do 
their best possible work in the schoolroom. Much of the 
progress of civilization would never have been made — or 
at least the process would have been much slower — had 
it not been for those individuals who excelled the mass of 
their fellows in intellectual capacity, and who were for that 



THE GIFTED CHILD 315 

reason enabled to conceive and to execute above and beyond 
the aspirations and the attainments of others. What a 
short-sighted policy it is, then, which bids us nurture the 
sub-normal and the backward at the expense of the brighter 
children! The crop of geniuses in any age is raised not from 
its dullest but from its brightest children. The pity of it 
all is that it has taken humankind so long to appreciate the 
relationship in its proper perspective. 

Ability more often general than specific. Theoretically, 
superiority of intellectual caliber may be either general or 
specific. In the former case, v/e should expect to find the 
accelerated children to be brighter in practically every sub- 
ject of school study, as well as keener at their play and more 
wholesome and aggressive in all their social intercourse; 
wliile in the latter, we should expect a child to be unusually 
capable in some specific study or situation, such for example 
as mathematics, or drawing, or music, or mechanical con- 
struction, while at the same time perhaps not ranking above 
the average in other fields of intellect. As a matter of fact, 
however, it appears that the ability which marks a child as 
unusually bright is a general rather than a specific ability. 
Occasionally, to be sure, you will find in the schoolroom 
a child who manifests exceptional ability in some one or 
two lines — notably drawing and music — but who is not 
above average or low-average in other respects. Psychol- 
ogy cannot yet inform us of the true significance of such 
cases. One would seem justified, however, in asserting 
that such specific abilities are the result of specific inherit- 
ance from some specially gifted ancestor from whom the 
child derives a small but striking percentage of his charac- 
teristics. Not infrequently, you will find that children who 
are positively dull in most respects show marked ability in 
one line, and even low-grade morons can often sing or draw 
admirably. Very obviously such ability must be specifi- 
cally inherited. 

Brightness and heredity. In the preceding lesson we 
found that there were two general causes of feeble-minded- 



316 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

ness: heredity and accident, the first being the more usual. 
Brightness, however, is never the resultant of accident. 
The secret of brightness is locked up in the germ plasm 
of the ancestry, and there alone. Y'ou have observed often 
enough that bright children are usually the oflPspring of 
superior parents. No amount of training and no favorable 
manipulation of environment can create ability, as we have 
already seen. At best these agencies can only foster and 
cherish the innate powers of the individual, and make more 
inevitable and direct their development. This is not to be 
interpreted as meaning that only highly educated parents 
who move in the best circles may produce children of ex- 
ceptional ability. It is, of course, true that the children 
of such parentage will be more likely in the long run to excel 
the offspring of parents low in the social scale, for the very 
fact that people are well educated and are associated with 
successful and prosperous neighbors points almost unmis- 
takably to a superiority of natural endowment. It is like- 
wise true, however, that marked mental ability and su- 
perior intellectual capacity reside in no special class nor are 
exclusively the product of any specific environment. Many j 
a man and many a woman of surpassing powers of intel- , 
lect have sprung from humble surroundings. Accident of I 
birth and environment are no obstacles to the presence of 
true genius. The pity of it is only that all too often the en- 
vironment is too harsh, too unsympathetic, too ignorant, 
with the unfortunate result that the natural talents never 
get the chance to find intelligent expression. It should be 
borne in mind, however, that the ratio of bright children in 
the schools who come from homes of the lower occupa- 
tional status to those who come from homes of a higher 
social class is by no means an even one. F. A. Woods ^ 
leads us to the conclusion that the upper one per cent of the 
population of a country produces as many men of genius 
as all the other ninety-nine per cent put together. 

^ " Heredity and the Hall of Fame "; in Po'pular Science Monthly, May, 
1913. 



THE GIFTED CHILD 317 

Dr. Terman reports (see Reference 1) classifying 148 
first-grade children into five occupational groups: (1) 
professional; (2) semi-professional; (3) skilled; (4) semi- 
skilled; and (5) unskilled, according to the status of their 
fathers, and applying the intelligence tests to them all: 
"The median I.Q. of classes 4 and 5 taken together was 
82.5; for classes 1 and 2 taken together, 112.5. Only one 
child in class 5 tested above 115, and only one in classes 1 
and 2 below 85. Two- thirds of those in classes 1 and 2 
were above 100, and seven eighths of those in classes 4 and 
5 below 100." From these results it is apparent that only a 
single child of the higher classes tested as low as the median 
of all the children of the lower classes. The level of intelli- 
gence, as we should expect, rises with the economic status 
of the parents. Exceptions to this law are extremely rare. 

Intellectual precocity not pathological. It has been long 
a common belief among parents and, to some extent school- 
men and educators, that there was grave danger in pushing 
a naturally bright child too fast up the intellectual ladder, 
as though in sooth he were likely to get dizzy and fall back. 
Wherever this matter has been brought under competent 
observation, however, the supposition has not met with 
confirmation. It is true that faulty methods of pedagogy 
applied to precocious children of neurotic and unstable 
temperaments or of poor physical health have often re- 
sulted conspicuously in ill effects upon the child so treated. 
But where normally stable children have been permitted to 
set their own pace educationally no harm has resulted. 
Rather all the qualities which make for happiness and suc- 
cess in life, such as power of concentration, social adapta- 
bility, leadership, emotional self-control, will power, de- 
pendability, etc., are ordinarily markedly intensified. Ex- 
ceptions to this general statement would probably not be 
more numerous than one would have to make in generaliz- 
ing concerning the mental and social and moral growth of 
the average class of children in the schoolroom. 

Special classes for bright children. The development of 



318 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

intelligence and educational testing has placed in the hands 
of school officials a means of discovering with tolerable ac- 
curacy all children of superior ability, as well as a method of 
determining approximately what that ability is. The next 
step, logically, is to provide extraordinary facilities for the 
promotion and advancement of such gifted pupils through 
the school system. This has already been done in several 
cities, and the reports of teachers and administrators are 
beginning to appear in the educational literature. It is not 
our province in this volume to enter into any survey of the 
practical results obtaining from this special class work. We 
are interested merely in the psychology behind the move- 
ment. Professor Whipple is credited with the assertion that 
ten out of one hundred children in the schools are able to 
complete satisfactorily two years' work in a single school 
year. The older method was to permit those children who 
seemed intellectually fitted thus to leave their fellows be- 
hind to " skip a grade," as the saying goes. Theoretically, 
this scheme resulted literally in getting the child ahead in 
accordance with his abilities. Actually, however, it inevita- 
bly left "gaps" in his ordered knowledge which were either 
never adequately filled, or which he was compelled at some 
later time to fill in at the cost of no little time and effort on 
his own part as well as patience on the part of the teacher. 
The only really satisfactory and sequential method of 
rapid advancement through school lies in the special class, 
tempered to the capacities of the scholars. Ideally, the 
aims of such classes for brighter children do not include 
merely saving time in the intellectual evolution of talented 
boys and girls; time-saving is but a side issue. The chief 
purpose of the specially organized class is to provide the 
learner with a richer course of study than he would other- 
wise enjoy. Along with this richness of content go the en- 
thusiasm and eagerness which are naturally felt by children 
who find that there is no limit to their intellectual incur- 
sions, and that their individual tastes and preferences may, 
to an extent hitherto undreamed-of, be satisfied. 



THE GIFTED CHILD 319 

Tentative conclusions concerning superior children. 
With the assistance of several of his Stanford University 
students, Dr. Terman has been able to secure Binet tests of 
some eighty California children, each of whom earned in the 
tests an I.Q. above 135, while most of them tested over 140. 
Fifty-nine of this group were subjected to somewhat careful 
study through interviews of parents and teachers, with the 
idea of arriving at certain definite conclusions concerning 
their intellectual ability, as shown by their school work, 
their mental and moral traits, the rate at which they had 
advanced through the schools, their interest and leadership 
in play, their health, heredity, etc. From the data thus 
amassed the investigator draws the following tentative 
conclusions which he believes amply justified by the in- 
quiry: 

1. That intellectually superior children are apparently not be- 
low the average in general health; 

2. That in the vast majority of cases their ability is general 
rather than special and one-sided; 

3. That the superiority is especially marked in moral and per- 
sonal traits; 

4. That "queerness," play deficiency, and marked lack of social 
adaptability are the exception rather than the rule. 

5. That while superior children are likely to be accelerated on 
the basis of chronological age, they are usually two or three 
grades retarded on the basis of mental age; 

6. That their school work is such as to warrant promotion in 
most cases to a grade closely corresponding to the mental age; 

7. That superiority tends to show early in life, is little influenced 
by formal instruction, and is permanent; 

8. That superior children usually come from superior families. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Do you know of any children whose mentality appears to be con- 
spicuously above the average? If possible, discover such a child in 
your neighborhood and experiment upon it with the Binet tests which 
fit its chronological age. Report your results in class. 

2. Confer with some teacher in the elementary schools where you ob- 
serve, and question her as to the gifted children, if there are any, in 
her room. If possible, have her point out to you one or more such 



320 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

children. Discover in so far as you are able wherein the superiority 
of any given child lies. Report in class. 

3. Familiarize yourself with the viewpoint and investigations to be 
found in chapter 11 of Terman's Intelligence of School Children. 

4. Look up the files of the Journal of Educational Research, and of other 
recent periodicals devoted to psychological investigation and report 
to class upon some survey of gifted children. 

5. Familiarize yourself with some of the more common group tests now 
in use for determining the general intelligence of individuals. Cf. 
especially the Otis and the Haggerty Tests. Confer with yoiu: in- 
structor as to sources. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Terman, L. M. The Intelligence of School Children, chaps. 10 and 11. 

2. Woodrow, H. Brightness and DiUlness in Children, chap. 13. 



LESSON 43 
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Extreme differences in general intelligence among the pupils. 
What are some of the factors which indicate the brightness or 
dullness of a child? 

2. Evidences of striking physical differences between pupils of 
the same age or attainments, such for example as differences 
in size, physical type, condition of health and nutrition, 
acuity of the sense organs, etc. 

Two extremes. Shortly before his fifth birthday, Francis 
Gallon wrote the following letter to his sister, Adele: 

My dear Adele: 

I am four years old and can read any English book. I can say 
all the Latin Substantives and Adjectives and active verbs be- 
sides 52 lines of Latin poetry. I can cast up any sum in addition 
and can multiply by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. 

I can also say the pence table. I read French a little, and I 
know the clock. 

Francis Galton, 
Febuary 15, 1827. [February misspelled.] 

And when he was ten years old, he wrote thus to his 

father: 

December 30, 1832 
My dearest Papa: 

It is now my pleasure to disclose the most ardent wishes of my 
heart, which are to extract out of my boundless wealth in com- 
pound, money sufficient to make this addition to my unequaled 
library : 

The Hebrew Commonwealth by John 9 

A Pastor Advice 2 

Hornne's commentaries on the Psalms 4 

Paley's Evidence on Christianity 2 

Jones Biblical Cyclopedia ^0 

27 




322 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

Dr. Woodrow, citing the above letters of Galton, com- 
pares the intellect of that remarkable man while he was yet 
a child with that of a girl named Abbie who was admitted to 
the Vineland Training School in 1900 and whose subsequent 
record was published ten years later in the bulletin of the 
School. ^j 

At the time of admission Abbie was small for her age, left-handed, 
and awkward. She always put the same foot forward when going 
up or down stairs; she knew her letters but could not read; she 
could count to ten; she knew some color and form, and she sang a 
number of hymns that she had learned at home. Her sight and 
hearing were normal, and she was fond of play. Among Abbie's 
more unfavorable characteristics were a bad memory and a poor 
power of imitation. She was gluttonous, untidy, untruthful, sly, 
and profane. Three months after her admission she could thread 
a needle and sew on buttons, could dust and rub floor a little, had 
learned to read A man ran, and 1 see a man (sometimes), counted 
to twenty, and, with help, could do such number work as this: 

12 3 

ill 

To-day, so the report runs: 

She is small for her age. She can braid corn-husks a little; can 
make a bed; can iron an apron; cannot count the cost of three 
one-cent stamps and three two-cent stamps, with the stamps be- 
fore her; cannot repeat five figures or a sentence of fifteen words; 
defines only in terms of use; can read a few sentences, spell a few 
words, and write about twenty-five words from memory; knows 
the days of the week, but not the months of the year; and does 
not know how many fingers she has on both hands. 

Francis Galton was a highly talented and gifted man; 
Abbie was a feeble-minded person. The mentality of both 
was conditioned on their native endowments, not upon 
differences in training. These cases mark the two extremes 
of individual difiPerences from the standpoint of general 
intelligence. 

What is the significance of individual differences? The 
above represents, as Dr. Woodrow suggests, the two poles 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 323 

of human intelligence. In previous lessons we have already 
become familiar with the fact that all individuals find a 
place somewhere on the genius-idiocy scale. This, as we 
have seen, does not imply that everybody is either an idiot 
or a genius, but rather that human beings tend to cluster 
more or less about a point on the scale which we may call 
"average" with many falling below and many above that 
point. And yet it would probably be quite impossible to 
find any two individuals in the "average" class who were 
alike in all respects, if indeed any could be discovered who 
were identical in any respect. In this lesson we are to en- 
deavor to answer this question : in what ways do children of 
ordinary "average" ability differ from one another? You 
will readily understand that, if it can be demonstrated that 
individual differences exist between children, it should prove 
a profitable field for psychology to attempt to devise means 
of discovering such differences, and for education to set 
itself the task of making adjustment to individual needs 
and inclinations thus demonstrated to exist. Suppose, for 
example, that a father desires his son to follow in his own 
career and enter business with himself. Suppose, however, 
that psychology can demonstrate that the boy is far better 
endowed for a professional career than he is for business. 
Obviously, if such were the case, it would be of distinct ad- 
vantage to society to allow the boy to follow his natural 
bent. Or again, suppose two young men of apparently 
similar abilities enter the profession of law. One of them 
forthwith "makes good" and gains an enviable reputation; 
the other drifts along for years without ever gaining any 
particular prominence, although possessed of just as much 
natural ability as his successful rival and having as good 
opportunity as he to rise. Wherein lies the difference? 
Obviously, in the capital of original nature: in the one it is 
invested wisely, in the other unwisely. Psychology may 
not for many years yet be in the position of being competent 
to predict absolutely the vocation for which an individual is 
best fitted naturally, but you can easily comprehend the 



324 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

significance which the investigation into the real nature of 
individual differences is bound to have in reducing the num- 
ber of misfits in professions, trades, and industries. When 
the psychologist can say to this youth: "You are best en- 
dowed for literary pursuits," and to this one: "You should 
become a mechanic," etc., much progress will have been 
made toward bringing not only success but serenity of mind 
to the individuals which go to make up society. And such 
prediction of vocational fitness will only become possible 
when more is known concerning the psychology of individ- 
ual differences. 

It must not, however, be inferred from all this that the 
Binet scale alone is a sufficient test of vocational endow- 
ment. At best, as we have seen, the Binet problems are 
intended to demonstrate the general intelligence of a child, 
without any special reference to his particular bents in 
drawing, music, art, mathematics, salesmanship, etc. It is 
true, however, that the Binet tests in the hands of an experi- 
enced investigator are "capable of bounding roughly the 
vocational territory in which an individual's intelligence 
will probably permit success, nothing else preventing." 

Within the past few years there have been developed a 
large number of supplementary tests designed more particu- 
larly to discover and diagnose the vocational aptitudes of 
individuals. Let it be supposed, for example, that a certain 
type of work requires quickness of perception and powers of 
sustained attention on the part of those who are to succeed 
best in it. Proof-readers, loom-workers and weavers, mail 
clerks, et al., should presumably be possessed of these quali- 
ties far more than ditch-diggers, stokers and dish-washers. 
Fig. 11 represents a single one of a great number of tests 
available for testing these mental traits. Both the correct- 
ness of the reading and the time required for completion of 
it are taken into account in determining a person's final 
score. 

If the above test were to be given to one hundred individ- 
uals selected at random, the results would show wide di- 



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326 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

vergences. A few persons would complete the story satis- 
factorily in, say, three minutes; a few others would require, 
say, ten or more minutes, while the greater number would 
take perhaps five or six minutes. Were the same test to be 
given to a number of experienced proof-readers there would 
probably be much less divergence in the time required for 
the task. It goes without saying that a printer desirous of 
engaging the services of a young man whom he wishes to 
train for proof-reading would do well to choose not one of 
those individuals who require ten minutes for the reading of 
the "Indian " selection, but rather, other things being equal, 
one of those who complete the reading in three minutes. 

Fig. 12 represents a test of a slightly different nature. * It 
is a type of "substitution test," so called from the task re- 
quired, which is to substitute for the numbers in the two 
columns the symbols at the head of the sheet which are ap- 
propriate. A record of the time and accuracy of perform- 
ance is kept and the individual's score computed from both 
factors. Again, of one hundred random individuals se- 
lected to perform this test, a few would complete it in five 
mmutes, a few would require fifteen, while the greater num- 
ber would, perhaps, finish in approximately seven minutes. 
Can you tell what trades or professions would be best suited 
for those mdividuals who could satisfactorily complete the 
test in the shortest time.? i 

Some evidences of individual differences in children. 
Physically, children are so different that we do not need to 
dilate upon that phase of individual differences. In size, 
body-weight, proportion of parts, stamina and health, nu- 
tritional condition, etc., a thousand children would present 
very wide divergencies. We are interested in the mental, 
however, not with the physical side of life — except, of 
course, in so far as the mental is understood to be always 
more or less conditioned upon the physical. The same 
thousand children, if they could be classified into groups 

J- Description of this and other tests of a similar character in Whipple's 
Manual, Keference 3. 
























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Fig. 12. SHOWING A PORTION OF A SUBSTITUTION TEST FROM THE 
MATERIAL SUPPLIED IN CONNECTION WITH WHIPPLE'S 
" MANUAL OF MENTAL AND PHYSICAL TESTS " 

Reprinted by permission of The C. H. Stoelting Company and of 
Professor G. M. Whipple 



328 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

according to mental, moral, social, and intellectual charac- 
teristics, would present most glaring differences in every 
conceivable respect. Indeed, the classification would be 
utterly impossible, since there would be discovered to be x 
amount of a quality in one individual, y amount of b quality, 
and z amount of c quality in the same individual; and more 
than likely no other individual in the entire group would 
present exact, if indeed approximate, amounts of either 
quality a, b, or c. In such marvelous fashion does the germ 
plasm operate to produce individuals. It is as though back 
of the germ cells, nature was delighting in making her po- 
tential creatures as varied as possible, not unlike a complex 
picture-puzzle the parts of which can never be fitted exactly 
together! 

In your observation of and intercourse with boys and 
girls you have no doubt noticed to a degree the presence of 
these individual peculiarities which differentiated one child 
from another. One child is affectionate, another is unde- 
monstrative; one is shy, another is bold; one is honest, an- 
other is dishonest; one is a natural leader, another is a natu- 
ral follower; one possesses much originality and ingenuity, 
another is slavish and imitative; one has the virtue of thrift, 
another is wasteful; one is characterized by conceit, another 
by as deep humility; one is timid, another is fearless; one is 
bright, lively, spontaneous, another is dull, sluggish, inert; 
one is refined, another is coarse and vulgar; one is vain, an- 
other is modest; one is particular, another is indifferent and 
careless; one is boisterous, another is retiring; one is respect- 
ful and reverent, another is disrespectful and irreverent; one 
is curious and inquisitive, another is passive and indiffer- 
ent; one is emotional, another is colorless; one is rough or 
even cruel, another is sympathetic and tactful. And so the 
list of variations might be extended to comprise all the men- 
tal, social, and moral qualities of which children are pos- 
sessed. And in addition to the extremes here enumerated 
there exist, of course, all degrees between, both on the nega- 
tive and on the positive sides. You can now begin to un- 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 329 

derstand something of the significance of individual differ- 
ences. 

Individual differences in school work. The following 
verse from Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses was read to 
a class of ten-year-olds with the purpose of noting individual 
differences in the faithfulness with which they could write 
down the story in their own words immediately after hearing 
it: 

In winter I get up at night 
And dress by yellow candle-light. 
In summer, quite the other way, 
I have to go to bed by day. 

I have to go to bed and see 
The birds still hopping on the tree. 
Or hear the grown-up people's feet 
StiU going past me in the street. 

And does it not seem hard to you, 
When all the sky is clear and blue. 
And I should like so much to play. 
To have to go to bed by day? 

I have selected two versions written by two girls, V and 
R, as representing typical mdividual differences in memory, 
spelling, and linguistic abilities, etc. 

V's version: 

In winter I get up by night and dress with a yellow candle- 
light. In summer I have to go to bed by day. I see the birds on 
the tree-tops and grown-ups feet I here. I'd love to stay out and 
play. 

R's version: 

In winter I get up at night and dress by yeoU candl light. In 
sumer quit the our way I have to go to bed by day. And still 
her the birds still. 

Had the task given to the children been one in arithmetic 
or in any other subject of study the results would have been 
similarly variable. You will not observe children in the 



330 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

schoolroom long before you will discover for yourselves how 
different are their powers of attention, of observation, of 
perception; how widely they differ from one another in 
imagery types, imagination, memory and reasoning ability; 
in interpretative powers and in powers of comprehension; in 
concentration and perception. You will find also, as we 
have said before, that children in the same grade manifest 
all degrees of ability and inability in music, drawing, writ- 
ing, composition, spelhng, manual training, arithmetic, and 
in each of the other subjects included in the curriculum. 

In how far individual differences in abilities are due to 
differences of training and environment and in how far they 
are the results of hereditary differences, need not concern us 
here. As we have pointed out so often in preceding lessons, 
however, inheritance is doubtless a far more powerful factor 
in the shaping of abilities of individuals than is the environ- 
ment in which they are nurtured. This, obviously, does not 
mean that the factors of nurture are of no significance: we 
know better. It does mean, however, that whatever our 
educational aims, values, or processes, they must all ulti- 
mately proceed from the general truth that boys and girls 
are what they are individually, not because of the accident 
of environment and training, but rather from innate differ- 
ences which lie hidden in the secret of the germ plasm. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Study Thorndike's chapter on "Individual Differences." 

2. Using your own initiative and originality, devise some simple test 
for demonstrating the phenomenon of individual differences, and try 
it upon two or more students or friends. Make a note of any pe- 
culiarities discovered and report the result of your test in class. 

3. Study some one test in Whipple's Manual and be prepared to demon- 
strate it in class. If necessary, confer with yoiu- instructor for blanks, 
apparatus, etc. 

THE LESSON APPLIED 

1. Knowing what you do of the frequent lack of close parallelism be- 
tween chronological and psychological age, what criticism have you 
to make concerning the prevalent method of grading children? 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 331 

2. Would it be wise or possible to group children in their school work 
strictly in accordance with the relative sameness of their abilities, or 
is it more wise to limit the grouping to three classes: the dull, the 
bright, and the average? 

3. The statement has been made that there is no such thing as an av- 
erage child. If such is the case, what is its pedagogical significance? 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Terman, L. M. The Measurement of Intelligence, pp. 16-21. 

2. Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology, vol. 3. 

3. Whipple, G. M. A Manual of Mental and Physical Tests (general). 



LESSON 44 
THE UNSTABLE CHILD 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1. Evidences of the presence of psychoses or neuroses in any of 
the children. Confer with the teacher, if possible, having her 
indicate to you any children who might be classed as men- 
tally unstable. 

2. Any cases of habit-spasms, or "tics" in the children. 

The unstable versus the mentally deficient child. In the 
two lessons preceding we have concerned ourselves with 
children whose mentality tested above or below the average 
for their chronological ages. In this lesson we are to in- 
vestigate mental or nervous instability in children. If you 
have observed many times in the schoolrooms of your city, 
your attention has without doubt been called occasionally 
to children who seemed hyper-sensitive, or abnormally sug- 
gestible, or highly nervous, or unduly emotional, or who 
manifested other forms of instabihty. It is not improbable 
that you are acquainted with certain adults who are simi- 
larly unstable and neurotic: men or women who are totally 
unable to look out upon life normally and calmly; whose 
self-control has never been established with any degree of 
dependability; whose eccentricities are over prominent; who 
are the perennial victims of exaggerated fears and fore- 
bodings and dreads; who are characteristically indecisive 
and changeable in viewpoint; upon whom neighbors and 
friends are likely to look as "queer," or "pecuhar" people. 
Such adults are but the unstable children of yesterday 
grown up, and they are living, as it were, over a volcano 
which may erupt at any time, plunging them into serious 
mental disorder or nervous complications. 

But such people are by no means mentally deficient, 
either as children or as grown-ups. Indeed, they are often 



THE UNSTABLE CHILD 333 

brilliant, testing well beyond their chronological age, or at 
least ranking with the average of all other children men- 
tally. A defective heredity is often a tremendous factor in 
the behavior of the unstable child, and some of the world's 
most famous men have been distinctly neurotic. We can 
but conclude, therefore, that heredity in the case of the 
mentally unstable does not so much decrease the native 
capacities of the individual as it lessens the normal control 
which he has over his capacities and over himself. In gen- 
eral, we may say that the unstable person lacks that balance 
which characterizes the normal responsible person. He has 
none of the niceties of control and coordination of move- 
ments that his normal fellow possesses. He is impulsive, 
possesses numerous idiosyncrasies, and is often excessively 
irritable and depressed, becoming at times, however, quite 
the reverse. 

Surely no more classic description of an unstable individ- 
ual could be cited than that of Dr. Samuel Johnson which is 
given by Lord Macaulay. And the very fact that the per- 
son described was the great Lexicographer should leave no 
doubt in our minds that mental dullness does not necessarily 
go with mental idiosyncrasy: 

He had become (before he left the university) an incurable 
hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his 
life, or at least not perfectly sane; and in truth eccentricities less 
than his have often been thought grounds sufBcient for absolving 
felons, and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his 
mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people 
who did not know him. At a dinner table he would, in a fit of 
absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. He would 
amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the 
Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to 
a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see the 
hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in 
the streets through which he walked. If by any chance he missed 
a post, he would go back a hundred yards and repair the omission. 
Under the influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly 
torpid, and his imagination morbidly active. At one time he 



334 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

would stand poring on the town clock without being able to tell 
the hour. At another he would distinctly hear his mother, who 
was many miles off, callmg him by name. . . . With such in- 
firmities of body and mind, the celebrated man was left at the 
age of two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. 

Physical symptoms of instability. Some months ago the 
writer chanced to be in attendance at a psychological clinic; 
i.e., a testing of the mentality of children with the Binet or 
other tests. One of the children who had been sent in by 
her teacher was a girl of twelve years, whose muscular con- 
trol was complained of as being almost entirely lacking. 
The Binet tests showed the child to be of average intelli- 
gence for her age. But when the physician made his ex- 
amination it was revealed that she was anaemic and was in a 
general condition of poor health, aggravated no doubt quite 
as much by her nervous condition as the latter was aggra- 
vated by the former. Among other things, she was asked 
to extend her arms horizontally in front of her, keeping her 
hands open and fingers outstretched. The child was per- 
fectly at ease, but her arms trembled like leaves in the 
wind. She appeared to have almost no control over the in- 
voluntary muscles of her body, with the result that they 
were constantly twitching. Of course none of us can alto- 
gether control these involuntary twitchings of our muscles. 
You can demonstrate this fact to your own satisfaction if 
you so desire by attempting to hold your outstretched hand 
perfectly still. In spite of your best effort, you will find if 
you attend closely that there are circumscribed and rhyth- 
mical tremors which are constantly passing through the 
hand. But the child referred to above possessed practically 
no control, and her hands and arms made very visible ex- 
cursions in rapid succession to and fro and up and down. 

This lack of control over the musculature is one of the 
common physical accompaniments of instability. Others 
may be inability to control the speech organs and even facial 
expression, nervous fingering of objects, clumsiness of gait 
and of general movements. Often the heart action is irregu- 



THE UNSTABLE CHILD 335 

[ lar, the breathing correspondingly jerky, and the patient 
suffers from indigestion and occasionally from antemia. 
- Such children are often delicate without having any specific 
' disease. Disorders in sleep are particularly common among 
them. The night fears which we described in our les- 
: sons on the emotions run riot in the unstable. Many such 
' children are rheumatic ; some are pre-tubercular. Physical 
• irritation, due to such abnormalities as eye-strain, impacted 
or carious teeth, nasal obstructions, etc., is likely to be the 
rule rather than the exception. Muscular movements, in 
addition to being uncontrollable, are sudden, rapid, and ill- 
coordinated. These symptoms are especially likely to be 
observable in those parts of the body which are most deli- 
cately and finely balanced; i.e., in the face, the hands, and 
the speech apparatus. The unstable child is very restless 
both in the schoolroom and at home. The end-organs are 
hyper-sensitive with the result that sharp noises or bright 
fights cause much discomfort. Such children are subject to 
sudden and intense pallor, alternating with flushing, and 
excessive perspiration may follow the slightest exertion or 
excitement. 

Emotional characteristics. But marked as are the physi- 
cal symptoms of the unstable child, they are by no means so 
certain indicators of instability as are the emotional and 
volitional characteristics. The most marked and universal 
of all the characteristics of an unstable child is an excessive 
emotionality. The slightest stimuli may provoke in him 
the most sudden and intense responses. He is apt to be 
"quarrelsome, noisy, destructive, mischievous, and re- 
bellious." He is ordinarily remarkably timid, apprehen- 
sive, apt to magnify trivialities, and slow in his effort to 
meet them. Irritable in temper, unstable children are sub- 
ject to outbreaks of passion upon slight pretext. They pass 
easily from levels of hilarious joy and delight to lower levels 
of depression and pessimism. In affection they are usually 
demonstrative beyond the ordinary, and are highly jealous. 
They court notice and praise and approval, but are often 



336 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

easily humiliated and chagrined. They are very fastidious, 
and often display marked aversions to foods of certain vari- 
eties. The sexual emotions are often precociously devel- 
oped in such temperaments as theirs. The gregarious in- 
stinct is strong, and unstable children suffer often with 
loneliness; hence, they seek always companionship and 
crowds. They melt in tears at the slightest provocation, 
but are apt to be laughing happily the next moment. The 
unstable child loves excitement, is notoriously imaginative, 
but is hopelessly inattentive. Observation is not infre- 
quently poor, but comprehension is hkely to be quick. 
Terman says of such children: 

The nervous child is hesitating, timid, vacillating, unable to 
cope with the real. More and more he falls back upon day- 
dreams, books, imaginative enjojTnents, etc. He plays little, 
adjusts badly to other personalities, is seldom a leader. Not in- 
frequently he is made an outcast by his fellow pupils. Not bemg 
able to mhigle on equal terms with other children or to depend on 

himself, he clings to adults and becomes oddish and precocious 

Absurd scruples, religiosity, over-conscientiousness may appear.* 
The child weeps from stepping on ants, considers it sinful to eat 
meat, suffers torment over imaginary sins, etc. 

Common forms of psycho-neuroses. (1) Epilepsy. One 
of the common results of psychic and nervous disturbance 
is epilepsy. This form of neurasthenia (or psychasthenia, 
since the terminology is by no means fixed among the au- 
thorities) is usually inherited, and is therefore not hkely to 
be amenable to treatment. Children who are subject to 
epileptic attacks may be bright, but are more usually dull. 
Aside from the hereditary predisposition, the tendency may 
be aggravated by local irritations, such as eye-strain and 
decaying or impacted teeth, nasal obstructions, etc. Chil- 
dren who are afflicted with pavor nocturnus may become 
epileptic at the critical period just preceding adolescence. 
Early convulsions of childhood which are due to local irrita- 
tion are frequently also followed by pronounced epilepsy at 
puberty. Under no circumstances should the child subject 



THE UNSTABLE CHILD 337 

to frequent attacks in school be permitted to attend classes 
with normal children, there being a possibility that a sort of 
"psychic contagion " may be set up. The patient, during 
the period of attack by epileptic fits, ordinarily loses his 
memory completely for the time being, and when he emerges 
from the spell is entirely at a loss to recall anything that has 
happened. 

(2) Hysteria. Janet, the famous French psychologist, 
says of hysteria: "It is a form of mental depression, with a 
tendency to dissociation and the emancipation of systems 
of ideas and functions which by their synthesis constitute 
the personality." In other words, hysteria is a condition of 
the mental life wherein the unity of mental process is dissi- 
pated. Consciousness may become a very multiplex state 
in contrast with its usual unity. Some systems of idea- 
groups may be totally disconnected from the rest and per- 
haps be relegated to the unconscious, where they constitute 
a continual menace to the integration and relatedness of all 
the other ideas. In consequence, what is termed "multiple 
personality," in which the foreign group of associates and 
ideas alternate with the other conscious groups in controlling 
the behavior of the individual, may come about. The 
afflicted one may be a Dr. Jekyll one day or one minute, and 
a Mr. Hyde the next. Dr. Franz enumerates, among other 
symptoms of the hysterical subject, the following four: 
(1) emotional instability; (2) abnormal suggestibility; 
(3) an exaggerated ego, or morbid desire to win notoriety 
and sympathy; and (4) motor disturbances, such as convul- 
sions, tremors, and paralj^ses. Real hysteria, as Dr. Ter- 
man points out, is not extremely common, "but the emo- 
tional instability and the hyper-suggestibility bordering 
upon hysteria are not uncommon. To fixate the child's 
attention too intently upon matters of health, to overstimu- 
late the precocious, to permit day-dreaming to take the 
place of productive work, to destroy in any way the feeling 
of self-reliance and personal independence, all help in the 
formation of characters that may become hysterical." 



338 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

(3) Dementia prcBCOx. Dementia prcecox, or the "insanity 
of adolescence," is a form of psychosis which involves usu- 
ally sexual imagination, fantastic day-dreaming, brooding 
over disappointments, and a lack of relation between 
thought and action. This latter is perhaps the most charac- 
teristic symptom of this form of insanity. The individual 
afflicted is hkely to be more brilliant than the reverse, but 
exceedingly unpractical. The following description of the 
malady by Dr. Meyer is perhaps the best one available: 

There develops an msidious tendency to substitute for an efficient 
way of meeting difficulties a superficial, moralizing self-deception, 
and an xmcanny drift into many varieties of shallow mysticism 
and metaphysical ponderings or into fantastic ideas that cannot 
possibly be put to the test of action. All this is at the expense of 
really fruitful activity, which tends to appear insignificant to the 
patient in comparison with what he regards as far loftier achieve- 
ments. Thus there develops an ever-widening cleavage between 
thought-life and the life of actual application, such as would bring 
with it the corrections found in concrete experience. Then, under 
some strain which a normal person would be prepared for, a suffi- 
ciently weakened and sensitive individual will react with manifes- 
tations which constitute the disorders of the so-called "deteriora- 
tion process," or dementia prcscox. . . . 

Dr. Meyer gives, among others, the following case, which 
may be taken as typical of the disorder: 

She began school at seven years, was smart and applied herself 
well, but at the age of eleven she seemed to be failing, and was 
thought to be studying too hard. She grew thin, seemed nervous, 
and complabed of headaches; at twelve she was in poor health. 
... She was disappointed at home (later), for some time dreamt 
of becoming a teacher, but soon sank into hypochondriacal rumina- 
tions, and finally, at twenty-one, after useless surgical operations, 
passed into a confused religious excitement, followed by stupor, 
in which she sits inactive and irresponsive, with the top-heavy 
and yet empty notion of being good, of saving the world, etc. 

Other neuroses. Among the other neurotic disturbances 
which are more or less frequently observed in children 
should be mentioned chorea, or St. Vitus's Dance, a malady 



THE UNSTABLE CHILD S39 

associated usually with rheumatic affections of the joints. 
Dr. Terman describes its onset and development thus: 

At first the child may be considered unusually nervous. It 
drops things, has difficulty in sitting still, is clumsy in eating, in 
buttoning the clothes, has an awkward, shuffling, unsteady gait, 
and stumbles. Sometimes the first symptoms are slight spasms of 
the facial muscles, twitching of the eye, grimaces and the like. 
Later the movements become intensified, hregular, jerking, and 
almost constant except during sleep. In severe cases speech is 
almost impossible, and the child may be practically unable to 
walk, or to handle fork or spoon in eating. . . . 

Habit-spasms, too, or "tics," should also be included 
among the psychoses of childhood and adolescence. By 
habit-spasms are meant those automatic and involuntary 
muscular twitchings which are not infrequently met with in 
children. Ordinarily these twitchings are local, that is, 
they are less widespread over the body than is true of the 
choreiform twitchings. They involve "an isolated twitch- 
ing or contraction of any muscle or muscle-group, as of the 
face, tongue, neck, or organs of respiration, such as elevat- 
ing the lip to meet the nose, sniffling, lightning-like blinks or 
nods, writhing, shrugging the shoulders, elevating the chin 
and stretching the neck, protruding the tongue, showing the 
teeth, emitting queer guttural noises, etc." Very few chil- 
dren ever grow up to mature years without having at some 
time been the victims of habit-spasms of some form or other. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Confer with the teacher of some fifth or sixth grade, and get as much 
information as possible from her as to any neurotic children whom 
she chances to have in her room. Report the results of your inquiry to 
class. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Franz, S. I. "Hysteria"; in Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education. 

2. Terman, L. M. Hygiene of the School Child, chaps. 16, 17, 18. 



LESSON 45 
ADOLESCENCE 

What to look for in the observation period: 

1, The pupils in the seventh and eighth grades will, in most 
cases, havQ entered upon the period of adolescence. In your 
observation work in these grades, note especially any indica- 
tions that you may chance upon to the effect that adoles- 
cence in its earlier stages is a period of heightened and exag- 
gerated sense of self, of dreams and reflectings, of social 
organizings and social interests, of restlessness and moods, 
etc, etc. 

Definition of the term : adolescence. Roughly speaking, 
the period knov/n as adolescence may be said to extend from 
the twelfth to the twenty-fourth year of life. More accu- 
rately, it begins in temperate zones around the fourteenth 
year, in the case of boys, and one or two years earlier for 
girls. In warm climates its onset is somewhat earlier. The 
period of adolescence continues until maturity is reached, 
which is generally considered to be approximately twentj^- 
five years for men, and perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four 
for women. It is bounded on the one hand by childhood 
and on the other by adulthood. It is a sort of interregnum 
between the frolic of childhood and the earnestness and la- 
bors of maturity. It is the period of "storm and stress" of 
human existence in which the entire outlook upon life under- 
goes a marked change ; when the values of infancy and child- 
hood are reexamined critically in the light of the dawning 
personality; when new ideals, new standards, new view- 
points are brought into existence for the future adult indi- 
vidual; when concern for the human and social and moral 
obligations and responsibilities and possibilities have their 
true birth. 

You recall your study of the period in human history 



ADOLESCENCE 341 

known as the "Renaissance," or "new birth." If we may- 
liken the evolution of the individual to that of the group, or 
of mankind in general, we may term adolescence the re- 
naissance of the individual. For just as the peoples of the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, joying in their unfold- 
ing strength and looking forth for the first time upon a 
mighty, hitherto undreamed-of world stretching away to the 
uttermost confines and teeming with the most enticing pos- 
sibilities and opportunities for human endeavor, so the in- 
dividual who stands at the threshold of adolescence, and in 
the midst of the period itself, is as it were, a "revived" in- 
dividual, dweller in the midst of a new heaven and a new 
earth, possessed of seeming limitless might, feverish with 
energy and passion, consumed with herculean desire to 
plunge into untried life and extract from it all its sweet, 
quite unmindful of its bitter. Watch, if you will, some 
child who stands thus at the great threshold of the future. 
The world calls him in no uncertain language. Forces of 
which he has hitherto known nothing are stirring within his 
breast. Ideas and ideals previously undreamed of stream 
through his impassioned brain like the surges of ocean. 
Dormant strength is unfolding; restrictions and limitations 
are being cast off; mankind, nature, God, — all summon 
him to their service. Old things are passed away, and be- 
hold all things are become new again. 

Physiological characteristics of adolescence. The term 
adolescence comes from the Latin adolescens, which means 
youth. Youth is therefore a synonym for adolescence, and 
what a magic word it is! Adolescence is, physiologically, 
the time wherein there is more rapid growth of all the body 
parts than at any previous time since the first year of life. 
Growth in height precedes growth in weight, height ordi- 
narily reaching its fixity around eighteen, while weight may 
continue to be a variable quantity throughout the greater 
part of maturity. You are familiar with the sudden inci- 
dence of rapid growth in height of the boy, beginning around 
his thirteenth or fourteenth year. Hitherto he has been 



342 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIVIAL SCHOOLS 

but a boy in stature, but now suddenly he "shoots up" al- 
most overnight. The mother and perhaps the father, too, 
confess with a degree of parental pride that is delightful 
that the boy is taller than either of his parents now! And 
so with the girl. Around her twelfth year she begins to 
"run up," and in a few months has reached the stature of 
the mature woman, without, however, her robustness and 
weight. The muscles during adolescence grow more than 
at any other time. At the very first of the period usually 
appears a strange awkwardness and lack of gracefulness 
which is due to the fact that at puberty there is an initial 
period of lack of motor control. It is probable that ab- 
normal or excessive insistence on the part of school or home 
upon activities demanding delicacy and niceness of execu- 
tion during this period may lay the foundations for subse- 
quent instability and neuropathic ills, such as we referred to 
in the preceding lesson. The first year or two of adolescence 
is rather a time for the development of the all-round physi- 
cal body than for emphasis upon such accessory skills as 
artistic writing, drawing, and upon too much confinement of 
school work. This, of course, does not imply that formal edu- 
cation should cease for a season at the twelfth or thirteenth 
years; it rather points to the wiser course of more empha- 
sis upon fundamental than upon accessory muscle groups. 
You are perhaps in general familiar with the initial phase of 
puberty and adolescence as it is commonly observed, for 
example, in boys, "whom nobody loves except their moth- 
ers" during the time in which they are in this generally 
awkward and graceless period of their evolution. Or again, 
you are familiar with its manifestations in the voice of the 
boy which during the early part of adolescence is subject to 
"change" — a liability which causes him no end of embar- 
rassment. The reason back of this undependability of the 
voice is to be found in the fact that at adolescence the vocal 
cords become elongated as the larynx enlarges, thus inter- 
fering somewhat with the previously formed voice-control 
habits. 



ADOLESCENCE 343 

Psychological characteristics. But, after all, it is in the 
realm of the mind and the intellect that the most profound 
"storm and stress" takes place with the coming of adoles- 
cence. It would be wholly impossible in a brief chapter 
such as this to indicate in any satisfactory way all or the 
greater part of the psychological changes which come with 
adolescence. We must therefore be content with enumer- 
ating and illustrating a few of the more striking modifica- 
tions which appear at this time of life, and a few of the 
redirections which are given to former values and ideals. 

1. A heightened sense of self. Perhaps the most bashful 
and self-conscious of all individuals is the individual in the 
adolescent age. The very awkwardness characteristic of 
the earlier part of this period is in itself often a cause of 
the extreme self-consciousness of the adolescent. Another 
phase of this same heightened sense of self is to be found in 
the inordinate conceit which is not infrequently observable, 
although it is also true that youths are usually very sensitive 
to the remarks of others and at times may manifest a spirit 
of deep humility. 

2. An age of dreams. As Dr. Burnham has said, "the 
adolescent mind is filled with hopes, dreams, tempestuous 
passions, and new ideas." It is an age of musing and 
reverie. The future beckons, but the guiding stars and 
buoys which are to point the way across the trackless deep 
of life are as yet but indistinctly made out. Consequently, 
most of the dreams and hopes are either unattainable or else 
are still so misty and uncertain as to be well-nigh incompre- 
hensible even to the dreamer and hoper himself. An in- 
ordinate passion to solve great problems, and subdue mighty 
forces, and accomplish herculean tasks permeates the mind 
of youth. To win power, to merit praise and approval, to 
wear crowns of laurel won in righteous cause, to hold the 
destiny of many in the palm of one's hand — all these and 
scores of other ambitions stir insistently within the breast 
of youth. 

3. A social age. We have seen that the younger child is 



344 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

an individualist, becoming only a group member as he 
grows into the period of later childhood. With the coming 
of adolescence the social instincts enter their golden age. 
Egoism is likely to give place to altruism, although it may 
not. To quote from Dr. Hall: 

. . . The youth alternates from extreme individuation to mere 
slavishness in following his mates; from quixotic generosity to 
selfishness; from the highest ideals of social self-sacrifice to absurd 
notions of his rights. . . . Before pubescence games and plays are 
largely competitive; after it, team work is the most marked char- 
acteristic, and with it the gang and the club appear. While the 
youth is even more egoistic than before, while he is excessively 
self-conscious and perhaps aggressive toward the opposite sex, he 
also lays aside his personal likes and dislikes to work with his team 
and his school, and adopts almost slavishly the fads and frills 
dictated by those whom he elects as his socii. He now develops 
pride Lq his family, class, city, and nation, and not only civic and 
national patriotism can now be most effectively taught, but also 
love for humanity. . . . 

4. An age of restlessness. Another strong characteristic 
of the period is the adolescent's eternal seeking after new 
experiences, new sensations, new excitements, new stimuli. 
This is true quite as much on the physical as on the mental 
side of life. On the former, you have noted doubtless the 
interest which youths have in perfecting skills and clever- 
nesses, and in originating situations which call for ever 
newer and ever more skillful skills. On the latter, you have 
noted the thirst which young people ordinarily manifest 
in travel, change of scene, unusual experiences, novel and 
hitherto unthought-of intellectual diversions. It is the 
age in which the "thriller," whether it be in theatricals, or 
in literature, or mere sense experience, is sought after and 
courted as a fitting form of experiencing something new 
and untried. The race-course, the dance-hall, the moving- 
picture theater, the airship, the automobile, and scores of 
other sources of excitement are in good repute among most 
adolescents. 

5. An age of moods. One never knows quite how to take 



ADOLESCENCE 345 

an adolescent in the early teens, because he may manifest 
such diametrically opposite moods all in the same day. He 
may be for a time in the depths of misery and blackest 
despair, and in the next hour rise to heights of great elation 
and satisfaction. Even in youths of sound common sense 
and the very reverse of the unstable this changeableness of 
mood is often to be observed. At one moment the youth 
is a good "mixer," socially-minded and happy in the bosom 
of his group; at the next he may seek solitude from the rev- 
elry and good cheer of his mates to plunge himself into the 
most melancholic introspecting and ruminating. In per- 
sons of unstable mentality, as we have pointed out above, 
the dangers of this period are enormous. Too much look- 
ing-inward may be the causation of the subsequent with- 
drawing of the unstable from the group and the centering 
of thought upon himself. 

6. An age of omnivorous reading. For most youths the 
earlier years of the adolescent period represent an age in 
which the possibilities of literature and romance are delved 
into in order to satisfy that all but insatiable thirst after 
information, new experience, and new situations. With 
boys, as Dr. Hall points out, "stories of adventure, travel, 
and biography culminate in the eighth and ninth grades, 
and fiction at eleven for both sexes." Around the fifteenth 
year there comes a marked decline in the reading interest, 
which may continue for several years, or until an apprecia- 
tion of literature for literature's sake is instilled by growing 
familiarity with the better class of writers past and present. 
This same reading interest occasionally finds outlet in 
young would-be writers actually attempting to "write" 
stories of their own. Ordinarily, however, the fruits of 
adolescents' pens are apt to be largely plagiaristic of the 
works of a favorite writer. 

7. An age of religious searching. It is apparent from the 
investigations available that the great age for conversions 
falls somewhere in the neighborhood of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth years, and that unless the interest of youths 



346 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



1 



has been directed toward religious experience by this time 
the probabilities are strongly against their ever acquiring 
a very deep religious experience. The religious instinct, or 
the instinct to worship some thing or some body, is found in 
all peoples, no matter how primitive they may be. In 
civilized human beings it seems not to become normally 
insistent much before the period mentioned. 

Closely bound up in the instinct to worship, which makes 
its strongest appearance in adolescence, is the natural 
reverence for and interest in nature and the universe. To 
quote from Dr. Hall again: 

. . . The rapidly increasing brain connections make possible 
many new associations with their effects upon imagination and 
reason, so that for the first time there is now a possibility of the 
youth seeing the universe as a universe, and feeling it as divine. In 
the later teens most youths and maidens love to think of infinity, 
both in space and time. They try to picture it, and become filled 
with the sense of their own littleness and the vastness of the uni- 
verse. Most often these reflections attach themselves to the 
heavenly bodies and the sky, toward all of which the feelings are 
greatly deepened at adolescence. Now the sun moon and stars 
become foci for all sorts of symbolism and fancies, sometimes 
sentimental and sometimes mythological and religious. Clouds 
also become, in Ruskin's opinion, one of the greatest stimulants 
to imagination, as well as the most beautiful in their color and 
form and variations. The wind now echoes the restlessness of the 
youth, and the sea attracts him with its suggestions of eternity. 
If it really is true that nature appeals to the youth primarily in 
this poetical way, then it is little wonder that he has no love for 
high school and college science. To turn from the lover's moon 
to the binned-out, cold, dead moon of science; from Shelley's 
cloud to a mass of cold, aqueous vapor with a long Latin name; 
from a glowing opal symbolic of faith and hope to a dry record of 
geologic ages; from a heaven full of heroes, hunters, and maidens 
to estimates of the lengths of time necessary for a ray to reach us 
from one of them; all this must kill the spontaneous interest in 
nature and at the very best substitute for it utilitarian motives. 

8. An age of sexual interest. Previous to about the age 
of fifteen years, children of opposite sexes manifest little 



ADOLESCENCE 347 

interest in each other. Often, indeed, boys are actually 
outspoken in their dislike for girls, whom they consider to 
be "silly," and perhaps physical "weaklings." Girls too 
not infrequently look upon boys as rough and barbarous, 
and rather to be shunned than cultivated. But from the 
middle teens this mutual dislike disappears, and the two 
sexes begin to feel a deep interest in each other. There is a 
pleasantness in the company of those of the other sex which 
I)reviously did not exist in the minds of either in any par- 
ticular degree. It is the age when good camaraderie exists 
between youths and maidens aUke, a time when the founda- 
tions of firm and satisfying friendships between schoolmates 
are formed which endure throughout life. 

The sex instinct is one of the two or three fundamental 
forms of behavior which shape all life and all ideals. Ado- 
lescence is the period when this instinct finds its expression 
in chivalrous attitudes toward woman, on the part of youths, 
and on the part of maidens respect and sympathy for men. 
Lives are easily shipwrecked in this trying period, and there 
is need for the greatest care and wisdom in directing the 
evolution of children through the most significant of all 
seasons, when the glamour of a dawning sex consciousness 
may easily throw the great and sacred things of life into 
false perspective and wrong relief. 

9. An age of great 'plasticity of nervous tissue. Early ado- 
lescence is also characterized by the relative ease with which 
habits and attitudes are formulated. Previous to the dawn 
of the period certain fundamental habits of health and physi- 
cal functioning have been formed, but it is in adolescence 
that the most significant life-habits and attitudes have their 
birth. Habits of industry or of shiftlessness and laziness; 
habits of thrift or of spendthriftness; habits of reverence 
or of irreverence; attitudes of chivalry or of contempt, of 
toleration or of bigotry; all these and a score more of the 
basic habits and attitudes of human life are acquired for the 
most part in adolescence. Human nature is represented at 
this age, within its hereditary limits, as a mass of plastic 



348 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORIMAL SCHOOLS 

clay, responsive in its moulding to the will of the artisan. 
Once the age is over, the habits and attitudes already formed 
will remain hard as adamant. Nature offers few second 
chances after adolescence. Generally speaking, what the 
youth is at twenty-five he will be when he is forty-five, so 
far as basic attitudes toward life and its problems and possi- 
bilities are concerned. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Waddle makes the statement that "the typical delinquent is the 
boy . . . approximately fifteen years old." Can you account for this 
incidence of delinquency in the early years of the adolescent period? 

2. From your knowledge of the nature of adolescence, try to make a list 
of some of the more dangerous stimuli which are likely to be encoun- 
tered by boys or girls during their early teens. 

3. Endeavor to illustrate the various points of the lesson by reporting 
to class all possible additional incidents of which you may know which 
would tend to show that adolescence is an age of dreams, of a 
heightened sense of self, of restlessness, of the social instincts, of 
moods, etc. 

SELECTED REFERENCES 

1. Burnham, W. H. "The Study of Adolescence"; in The Pedagogical 
Seminary, vol. 1, pp. 174-95. 

2. Hall, G. S. Adolescence. 2 volumes. (For general reference.) 

3. Hall, G. S. Youth, its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene, chap. 8. 

4. Hall, G. S. Educational Problems, vol. 2, chap. 9. 

5. Tanner, A. E., and Hall, G. S. "Adolescence"; in Monroe's Cyclo- 
pedia of Education. 



LESSON 46 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOCIAL ATTITUDE 
TOWARD CHILDREN 

It will be interesting to note in this final chapter some- 
thing of the slow evolution which society has undergone 
from primitive times down to our own day in its attitude 
toward its children. Somewhat recently Mr, George 
Henry Payne has published a significant volume entitled, 
The Child in Human Progress. This represents the patient 
research of years into this absorbing topic, and we shall 
be compelled to follow it largely here for the simple reason 
that it is the most comprehensive and sympathetic inquiry 
into the evolution of society toward its children that is avail- 
able. 

We are likely to assume in these days of philanthropy 
that children have always been, by all peoples, objects of 
solicitude and charity, and that the human race has since 
its appearance upon the earth guarded and conserved its 
children as its most precious and most indispensable asset. 
Such, however, is not the case, as it will be the aim of this 
final lesson to show. Indeed, the very fact that there exist 
in our own land to-day various societies for the prevention 
of cruelty to children, that there stand upon our state and 
national statute books laws regulating child labor, and that 
there are innumerable children's friends' societies and or- 
phanages, etc., should naturally lead us to infer that in 
past ages, when man was still in a stage of evolution wherein 
none of the niceties and charities and philanthropies of 
to-day were existent, the place which children occupied was 
anything but enviable. 

The Papuans. In the book above referred to, Mr. Payne 
describes at some length the condition and position of 
childhood among the uncivilized people of New Guinea. 



350 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



1 



Among these tribes the number of children allowed to sur- 
vive is always very limited, the reason being, partly at 
least, that children are considered a hindrance in gaining 
a livelihood; and partly that they are continually in fear 
of famine, hence deem themselves compelled to keep down 
the birth-rate, or at least the living-TSite. One particularly 
revolting custom of the Papuans is to bury children alive 
whenever the parents or some person of tribal importance 
dies, the excuse being that the parents will have need of the 
services of their children in the other world to which they 
are supposed to have gone. Cannibalism is still common 
among them, and usually it is the children who are massa- 
cred for the feasts. 

Other primitive tribes. Among certain tribes of Central 
Australia twins are considered to be monstrosities, and are 
immediately put to death as something which is unnatural. 
Among the KaflBrs it was found that when twins are born, 
one is usually put to death, the sounder of the two being 
permitted to live. In some primitive regions the mother 
who bears twins is considered just as much a monstrosity 
as are the children themselves, and not infrequently both 
mother and infants are sacrificed. Among the Australian 
aborigines it is usual to destroy those children who are mal- 
formed or defective in physical features. In some parts of 
Africa a child born with teeth is put to death. In Kam- 
chatka children born in stormy weather are Hkewise dis- 
posed of. One writer, quoted by Payne, states that the 
entire months of March and April, the last week in each 
month, and every Wednesday and Friday, are considered 
in Madagascar to be unlucky days, and any child born on 
any day included in this enumeration is put to death! 
Among certain Madagascar tribes a child who sneezes at 
or shortly after birth is exposed to the elements to die. 
Among the Basuto, when a child is born with its feet first, 
it is killed, whereas among the Bondei it is killed if it is 
born head first. The Bondei consider a child who cries at 
birth or immediately after unlucky, and forthwith strangle 



SOCIAL ATTITUDE TOWARD CHILDREN 351 

it. Female babes are more often exposed or strangled than 
are males in most primitive tribes. 

It is obvious that when we speak of tribes that are primi- 
tive at the present day, we are dealing with peoples who 
have failed to progress since most ancient times; hence we 
may regard the Papuans, the Madagascar peoples, and the 
savage Australian tribes as on a par with primitive people 
of thousands of years ago. We are therefore really studying 
the past in the present, and may assume that the treat- 
ment accorded children by such tribes at the present time 
is typical of the treatment which they endured at the hands 
of parents thousands of years ago when the earth was 
young, or at least when the human race was young upon it. 

In general, the real reason lying back of the sacrifice of 
children was no doubt the perennial and endless fear of 
famine which hovered over savage races Uke an avenging 
fate. In many instances this fear was dissembled in super- 
stitious rites and religious sacrifices, but it is extremely 
doubtful whether such motives really can account for the 
tremendous burden of infanticide and cannibalism and 
sacrifice which darken the records of antiquity. Often 
the primitive peoples urged in justification of their dispos- 
ing of superfluous babies, the hindrance which children 
caused them in their nomadic life, but it is probable that 
this, too, was but a cloak to cover their supreme terror of 
lean years when the harvests should fail and the food supply 
run treacherously low. 

The Greeks. Even among the Greeks, with all their 
finer qualities, the fate of the children seems to have been 
often cruel. Every father had the right to expose his child 
if he so chose, at least in the earlier periods of Grecian his- 
tory. Exposure by him was very common, and the favorite 
figure in the comedy of the fourth century was the child 
who had been exposed by his parents, rescued, and after- 
wards found by them. "Nothing more foolish than to 
have children," says an old Greek proverb. And again, 
"There is nothing unfortunate in being a father, unless one 



352 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

is the father of many children." Often the Athenian would 
consent to bring up his first child, but exposed those sub- 
sequently born. The female baby was deemed to be of 
little importance, but the son must invariably be brought 
up, it being little less than a religious duty to rear him. It 
should be said in justice to the Greeks, however, that when- 
ever a child was exposed it was usually with the hope that 
it would be discovered before too late and rescued from its 
fate. To this end the early part of the day was ordinarily 
chosen for the gruesome task of exposing the infant, in 
order that there might be greater chance of its being dis- 
covered before nightfall. Babies were deposited "in the hip- 
podromes, at the entrance to the temples, and the sacred 
grottoes, where they would be most in evidence. A watch 
was kept on the place, or it was revisited in order to be sure 
of the fate of the infant." 

The Romans. You recall the story of the mythical 
founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, and you recall 
also that Romulus and Remus were exposed, befriended, 
and nursed by a she-wolf, and finally grew to manhood 
under her nurture. From this incident we may presume 
that exposure among the early Romans was likewise com- 
mon. And, indeed, we know it to have been. The 'pater 
potestas gave the father complete power of life or death over 
his children. He could let them live or expose them ac- 
cording to his desire. Hence he often did the latter, if it 
pleased him. When Rome degenerated in its later period 
so hopelessly, the Roman attitude toward children perhaps 
reached its worst manifestation, notwithstanding the hu- 
manitarian efforts of some of the emperors to improve the 
situation. Undesired children were commonly abandoned 
in the streets or thrown into the Tiber. Commonly the 
exposed children were rescued by fakirs, and mutilated in 
order to be for them a source of revenue in appealing to the 
sympathy and generosity of passers-by! Thus, Seneca 
says, referring to the mutilated children: "Look on the 
blind wandering about the streets leaning on their sticks, 



SOCIAL ATTITUDE TOWARD CHILDREN 353 

and on those with crushed feet, and still again look on those 
with broken limbs. This one is without arms; that one has 
had his shoulders pulled down out of shape in order that 
his grotesqueries may excite laughter. ..." 

It should not be forgotten, however, that through all 
these times of degeneracy and profligacy on the part of the 
idle and wealthy upper classes of Rome there was growing 
up slowly a better ideal of family life and the institutions 
based upon communal living among the common people, 
and that among these classes, at least, the true importance 
of the child was being gradually comprehended. It was 
after all the profligate upper classes who were the chief 
offenders. With the coming of Christianity and the teach- 
ings of Jesus, a new impetus was given to safeguarding the 
lives of the children, inasmuch as it was one of His own 
teachings that "a little child shall lead them." 

In the Middle Ages. But after all the teachings of Chris- 
tianity did not result in universal nor immediate ameliora- 
tion of the estate of the children. The practice of ridding 
one's self of undesirable children persisted to such an extent 
down through the Middle Ages that the Church, as repre- 
senting the most enlightened agency, was compelled to be- 
come the avowed protector of parentless children. Mothers 
who felt that they were unable to rear their children were 
enabled thus to deposit them in the care of the church au- 
thorities who engaged to rear them. "By the door of the 
churches it became the custom to have a marble receptacle 
in which mothers placed the children that they were forced 
to abandon." Yet in spite of this provision, so hard were 
conditions of living in the early ages of the Christian era, 
that thousands of children were thrown upon the highways 
or left in the deserts to die. In France, Germany, Flanders, 
Italy, and England it was always possible for poor parents 
to take their children to market and sell them "like the 
veriest chattels." Under the inspiring need of the times 
foundling hospitals and orphanages sprang up all over Eu- 
rope, where the children who were deserted or abandoned 



354 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 



1 



were given homes and brought up in some measure at least 
of comfort. In Paris, during the sixteenth and especially 
the seventeenth centuries, poverty was the rule rather than 
the exception, with the result that babes were thrown into 
the sewers daily by mothers who were unable to rear them. 
And again, as in ancient Rome, children fell into the hands 
of magicians and mountebanks, who deformed and muti- 
lated them in order to make them an assistance in winning a 
Uvelihood. 

The factory system. With the coming of the factory 
system in England, particularly in the seventeenth century, 
the abuses to which children had previously been subjected 
took a new turn. Forthwith any child who was a public 
charge was placed in the factories and set to work, regard- 
less of his age or condition of health. Says Payne: 

A little creature of six years was thought fit for labor in the town 
of Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade. Writers at that 
time, and among them some who were considered as eminently 
benevolent, mentioned "with exultation, the fact that in that 
single city boys and girls of tender age created wealth exceeding 
what was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve thousand 
pounds a year." 

The overseers of the poor became the agents of the mill-owners, 
and arranged for days when the pauper children could be in- 
spected and selected for the factory work. When the selections 
had been made, the children were conveyed by canal boats and 
wagons to the destination, and then their slavery began. Some- 
times men who made a business of trafficking in children would 
transfer them to a factory district where they were kept in a dark 
cellar until the mill-owner, in want of hands, came to look them 
over and pick out those that he thought would be useful. Nom- 
inally the children were apprentices, but actually they were slaves, 
and their treatment was most inhuman. The parish authorities, 
in order to get rid of the imbeciles, often bargained that the mill- 
owners take one idiot with every twenty children. What became 
of the idiots after they had passed into the hands of the capitalists 
is not known, but in most cases they did not last long and mys- 
teriously disappeared. . . . The children who were apprenticed 
out to the mill-owners were fed on the coarsest kind of food and in 



SOCIAL ATTITUDE TOWARD CHILDREN 355 

the most disgusting way. They slept by turns, in relays, in beds 
that were never aired, for one set of children were turned into the 
beds as soon as another set had been driven out to their long and 
filthy toil. Some tried to run away, and after that they were 
worked with chains around their ankles; many died, and the little 
graves were unmarked in a desolate spot lest the number of the 
dead attract too much attention. 

The amazing thing about it all is that for generations 
almost nothing was done to ameliorate the conditions in 
which innocent childhood found itself. Beginning shortly 
after the year 1800, various reformers and philanthropists 
and writers turned all the power of their invectives against 
the universal exploitation of childhood in England, but 
with little substantial result for fifty years or more. Among 
others Charles Dickens took the side of the victims of the 
factory system and the avaricious owners, and succeeded, 
perhaps more than any other person, in interesting the pub- 
lic in their condition. M. T. Sadler in the House of Com- 
mons, and Lord Shaftesbury in the House of Lords, repre- 
sented the champions of the children in officialdom, and it 
was due in considerable measure to their efforts that re- 
straining legislation was finally written upon the statute 
books of England. This fixed the number of hours which 
children should be permitted to labor, and limited both the 
kind of work and the age of the worker. 

The eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
turies found the children of America similarly victims of 
child labor. Indeed, when the first cotton factory in this 
country was started (in Beverly, Massachusetts) it was 
stated that it would afford "employment to a great number 
of women and children many of whom will be otherwise use- 
less, if not burdensome, to society." In 1866 a special com- 
mittee reporting to the State Legislature of Massachusetts 
made the following statement concerning the somewhat 
prevalent custom of factory-owners canvassing for small 
children to operate their spindles and run their machinery: 
"Small help is scarce; a great deal of machinery has been 



356 PSYCHOLOGY FOR NORMAL SCHOOLS 

stopped for want of small help, so that the overseers have 
been going around to draw the small children from schools 
into the mills; the same as a draft in the army." 

After the Civil War, however, a humanitarian movement 
began to spread all over this country in the interests of child 
welfare and conservation. Following upon the establishing 
in New York, in 1866, of the first Society for the Prevention 
of Cruelty to Animals, there grew, in 1874, a movement to 
look after the rights of children, a Society for the Preven- 
tion of Cruelty to Children, and dating from the organiza- 
tion of this latter society are the first special laws known in 
the world to protect children and punish wrongs done to 
them. 

But the end is not yet. There still exist within our land 
the evils of child labor, of child abuse, and of child exploita- 
tion. We can take courage, however, from the fact that a 
strong and intelligent public opinion is being fostered 
throughout the length and breadth of these United States 
which condemns, in no uncertain terms, any and all agen- 
cies which "give offense unto one of these little ones." 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY AND REPORT 

1. Secure the latest report of the National Child Labor Committee, 
and study the problem of child labor as it exists in our oAvn country at 
the present time. 

2. The ancient Spartans exposed puny or sickly children to die upon 
the mountain-top: they wanted none save vigorous children who 
would make vigorous and valorous soldiers. Contrast with this our 
own attitude toward weak or sickly infants. WTiat conclusion do 
you draw as to the evolution of the social attitude? 

3. Gather all the information possible concerning your own State or 
local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. 
Do you know of any cases where this society has intervened as be- 
tween parents and child? 

4. Familiarize yourself with the principal child labor laws of your own 
country or State. 

SELECTED REFERENCE 

1. Payne, G. H. The Child in Human Progress, chaps. 1, 2, 3, 21, and 
22; also for general reference. 



INDEX 



Abnormality, as opposed to nor- 
mality, 188. 

Accelerated pupils, 312 £f. 

Achievement tests, 308. 

Acquired characters, inheritance of, 
159. 

Active imagination, 264. 

Addams, Jane, 290. 

Adjuster neurones, 19. 

Adolescence, moral nature in, 2S6; 
general discussion of, 340 ff.; 
physiological characteristics of, 
341; psychological characteristics 
of, 343. 

Adolescent literature, 195. 

.Esthetic emotions, 141. 

Affectors, 19. 

Africa, childhood among certain 
tribes of, 350. 

Age of mischief, 78. 

Ambitions of childhood, 259. 

Ament, defined, 300. 

Amphimixis, defined, 164. 

Amusements, importance of, in the 
development of childhood, 196. 

Ansemia, 335. 

Analysis, as an essential factor in 
thinking, 273. 

Anger, as emotional behavior, 134 fT. 

Animistic belief, and childhood, 139. 

Attention, general discussion of, 
238 ff.; involuntary, 242; non- 
voluntary, 243; voluntary, 243; 
characteristics of, in younger 
children, 246; in older children, 
248. 

Attitudes, and habits, 220. 

Auditory sensations, 224 ff.; images, 
254. 

Automatic behavior, 25. 

Axons, defined, 17. 

Ayres' Handwriting Scale, 308. 

Baby talk. 214, 217. 
Backward children, 297. 



Basutos, condition of children among 
the, 350. 

Bedouin tribes, as illustrating migra- 
tory response, 44. 

Behavior, defined, 1 ff.; complexity 
of, increases with experience, 2; not 
a narrow term, 6; lower forms of, 
23 ff . ; learned and unlearned, 33 ff . 

Beverly, site of first cotton factory, 
355. 

Binet tests, 302 ff. 

Blended inheritance, 184. 

Bondei, condition of children among, 
the, 350. 

Borderland, between normality and 
abnormality, 300. 

Bow-and-arrow age, 48. 

Boys' gangs, 59 ff. 

Brachydactylity, 155. 

Breaking of habits, 213. 

Breathing, as automatic activity, 25. 

Bright children, 312 flf. ; and heredity, 
315. 

Brown, H. W., 276. 

Bullying, as an instinct, 87. 

Burk, on teasing, 87, 

Cannibalism, 350. 

Cat calls, 77. 

Cell, description of, 16 ff.; unit of 

living matter, 16; cell wall, 16. 
Central Australian tribes, condition 

of children among the, 350. 
Central nervous sj'stem, 17. 
Cheating, as related to fighting, 84. 
Child labor, 356. 
Childhood, importance of, 3; as an 

age of activity in the larger sense, 

37; as the golden age of play, 67; 

plasticity and, 206; and habit, 211, 
Children, methods of studying, 6 fif.; 

heritage of the, 182 ff. 
Children's collections, 51 ff. 
Chinese, binding of feet among the, 

162, 204. 



358 



INDEX 



Chorea, 338. 
Chronological age, 302. 
Circulation of blood, aa automatic 

activity, 25. 
Citizen, good versus bad, 200. 
Civil War, 356. 
Coins, collections of, 52. 
Concepts, 269 ff.; building-up of, 

271. 
Conklin, on heredity, 161, 164. 
Consciousness, 239. 
Conundrums, delight in, 77. 
Cotton Mather, 279. 
Cousins, marriage of, 164. 
Criminology, juvenile, 281. 
Curiosity, as an instinct, 102 S.; 

destructive phase of, 106; as 

related to delinquency, 283. 

Darwin's relationship to Gaiton, 166. 

Davenport, on tropic stimuli, 23. 

Deductive thinking, 274 ff. 

Defective delinquents, 290. 

Defectives, classification of, 299. 

Dementia prcecox, 338. 

Dendrites, defined, 17. 

Dermal senses, images from the, 255. 

Deviation from the normal, 187. 

De Vries' theory, 163. 

Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop, 112; 

David Copperfield, 206, 263; Oliver 

Twist, 213. 
Digestion, as automatic activity, 25. 
Display, as an instinct, 90 ff. 
Dolls, collections of, 53. 
Dominance, 151. 
Doty, Madeleine Z., 292. 
Dugdale, R. L., 171. 

Earnestness of play, 70. 

Educational tests, 308. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 175, 279. 

Edwards-Tuttle family, 175. 

Egyptians, practice of the laws of 
heredity among the, 150. 

Electricity, as stimulus, 23. 

Ellis, A. Caswell, on dolls, 113. 

Emotions, 124 ff. 

Environment, as a factor in nervous 
disorder, 148; in the triangle of 
life, 190 ff. ; some important fac- 
tors in, 192; reading matter and, 



194; motion pictures and, 196; 
and delinquency, 293; and retar- 
dation, 298; and individual differ- 
ences, 330. 

Epilepsy, 336. 

Evolution, Lamarck's theory of, 
160; Weissmann's theory of, 160; 
De Vries' theory of, 163. 

Experimentation, as a method of 
psychology, 9. 

Expression, as distinct from impres- 
sion, 21. 

Factory system, in relation to child- 
hood exploitation, 354. 

Fear, as a form of emotional be- 
havior, 134 ff. 

Feeble-minded, marriage among, 164. 

Fighting, as an instinct, 81. 

Fluctuation, in descent, 146; of 
attention, 238. 

Focal idea, 239. 

Food-getting, as underlying migra- 
tory response in primitive races, 
43; as an instinctive form of be- 
havior, 45 ff. 

Franz, Dr. S. I., 237. 

Fringe ideas, 239. 

Fundamental to accessory, theory of 
the development of muscular con- 
trol, 36. 

Gaiton, Sir F., 321. 

Gaiton 's Laws, 156 ff. 

Ganglion, defined, 17. 

Gangs, in relation to truancy, 42; 

as a factor in environment, 193. 
General intelligence testing, 301 ff. 
General physical activity, 33 ff. 
Generals, hereditary genius among 

great, 177. 
Genius, 315 ff. 
Genzmer, experimenting with the 

needle-prick, 227. 
Geotropism, 24. 

Germ plasm, continuity of the, 164. 
Gifted children, 312 ff. 
Girls' collections, 63. 
Girls' gangs, 61. 
Girls' play, 79. 
Goddard, Dr. H. H., 167. 
Gravity, as a stimulus, 23. 



INDEX 



S59 



Greeks, condition of childhood among 

the primitive, 351. 
Gregarious instinct, 58 ff. 
Group intelligence tests, 308. 
Gustatory sensations, 224 ff . ; images, 

255. 

Habit, general lesson, 200 ff. ; 
strength of, 208; physiological 
basis of, 210; and childhood, 211; 
and imitation, 216; inevitableness 
of, 220; spasms, 239. 

Habits, conditioned upon response 
to environment, 21; good and 
bad, 212; breaking of, 213; based 
in instincts, 216; and moral codes, 
282. 

Haggerty Intelligence Tests, 308. 

Hail, G. S., 113, 236, 294, 344, 346. 

Hearing, development of, in infants, 
226. 

Heiit, as stimulus, 23. 

Height, average, 187. 

Heliotropism, 24. 

Hereditary Genius, by Sir F. Galton, 
176 ff. 

Heredity, general lesson, 22 ff.; 
commonly obser\'^ed facts of, 144 
ff. ; three famous laws of, 150 ff.; 
studies in, 167 ff.; racial, 182; 
physical aspects of, 183 ; inevitable- 
ness of, 186; versus environment, 
190 ff.; and moral development, 
281 ; and neurosis, 333. 

Humanitarian movement, 356. 

Hunting response, 45 ff. 

Hysteria, 337. 

Ideals, of childhood, 259. 

Idiocy, a classification of aments, 
300. 

Imagery, defined, 253; illustrations 
of, 254; values of, 256; child's, 
257. 

Imaginary playmates, 69. 

Imagination, springtime of the, 258; 
active and passive, 264. 

Imbecility, a classification of amen- 
tia, 300. 

Imitation, as an instinct, 117 ff.; 
reflex, 117; acquired, 119 ff.; in 
animals, 121; and habits, 216. 



Impression, as distinct from ex- 
pression, 21. 

Individual differences, 326. 

Individual work, 187. 

Individualism in early play, 68. 

Inductive thinking, 274 ff. 

Infancy, illustrations of response to 
stimuli in, 20; moral nature in, 
285. 

Inheritance, of mental traits, 145, 
184; of moral traits, 145; of dis- 
ease, 147; laws of, 150 ff. 

Instability, nervous, 334; physical 
symptoms of, 334; emotional 
symptoms of, 335. 

Instinctive behavior: general physi- 
cal activity, 33 ff.; migratory re- 
sponse, 40 ff. ; food-getting and 
hunting, 45 ff.; ownership and 
collecting, 51 ff. ; gregarious, 
68 ff.; play, 65 ff.; fighting, 81; 
teasing and bullying, 87 ff.; dis- 
play and approval, 90 ff . ; rivalry, 
95; curiosity, 102 ff. ; maternal, 
110 ff.; imitative, 117; as related 
to emotional behavior, 124 ff.; 
and habit, 216. 

Instinctive response, in general, 26 
ff. ; explanation of persistence of, 
29; as related to racial behavior, 
34. 

Intellectual precocity not patho- 
logical, 317. 

Intelligence in men and in animals, 
205. 

Intelligence quotient (I. Q.), de- 
fined, 304. 

Intelligence tests, group, 308. 

Interest, as a factor in memorization, 
266. 

Introspection, as a method of 
psychology, 6 ff. ; as an aid in 
understanding the nature of child 
behavior, 7. 

Involuntary attention, 242. 

Irritability, of plants, 23. 

James, William, 232, 239. 

Janet, 337. 

Jealousy, in infancy, 82 ; as emotional 

behavior, 127. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 186. 



3G0 



INDEX 



Jewett, Frances, on heredity, 162. 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 333. 
Joy, as emotional behavior, 128. 
Jukes, study of the, 171 ff. 
Juvenile delinquency, 288 ff.; meth- 
ods of dealing with, 291. 

KafBrs, condition of childhood among 

the, 350. 
Kallikak family, study of the, 167 ff. 
Kamchatka, condition of childhood 

among certain primitive tribes of, 

350. 
Kinsesthetic sensations, 224 ff.; 

images, 255. 
Kindergarten plays, 69. 

Lamarck's theory of evolution, 160. 
Language, the development of, and 

environment, 192. 
Leadership, as an aspect of the 

rivalry instinct, 98. 
Learned behavior, 190 ff. 
Lee, Joseph, on play, 47, 76. 
Left-handedness, inheritance of, 145. 
Les Miserables, 114. 
Light, as stimulus, 23. 
Literary men, hereditary genius 

among, 177. 
Lloyd Morgan, on imitation in 

animals, 122. 
Locke, 281. 

Longevity, as an inherited trait, 145. 
Love, as emotional behavior, 137 ff. 

Macaulay, Lord, 33. 

Madagascar, condition of childhood 
among certain primitive tribes of, 
350. 

Magazines, children's, 195. 

Mark Twain, creator of Tom Sawyer, 
41. 

Martin Kallikak, 168 ff. 

Materials for mental testing, 309. 

Maternal instinct, 110 ff. 

Max Jukes, 171 ff. 

Medium, density of the, as a stimu- 
lus, 23. 

Memories, earliest, of childhood, 265. 

Memory, and imagination, 262; 
differences between, and imagina- 
tion, 264; desultory, 266. 



Mental defectiveness, 299 ff. ; testing, 

301 ff. 
Mental imagery, defined, 253. 
Mental rivalry, 99. 
Mental testing, 301 ff. 
Meyer, on dementia prcecox, 338. 
Middle Ages, condition of childhood 

during the, 353. 
Migratory instinct, in birds, 29; in 

children, 40 ff.; as related to 

delinquency, 283. 
Mischief, age of, 78. 
Molar agents, as stimuli, 23. 
Moods, of adolescence, 344. 
Moral codes, 282. 
Moral development, 279 ff.; stages 

in, 285 ff. 
Moron, a classification of aments, 

300. 
Motion pictures, as related to child 

psychology, 196 ff., 284. 
Motor fibers, function of the, 18. 
Musicians, hereditary genius among, 

178. 
Mutation theory, 163. 

Natural selection, as operative in 
bird survival, 28. 

Nature, versus nurture, 200; modi- 
fied by nurture, 218. 

Nature collections, 55. 

Neo-Darwinians, 164. 

Nest-building instinct in birds, 30. 

Nerve fibers, description of, 17; 
afferent and efferent, 18. 

Nervous disorders, inheritance of, 
148. 

Nervous instability, 332 ff. 

Nervous system, structure of, 16 ff.; 
complexity of, in birds, 30; modi- 
fication of, in habit, 210, 220. 

Neurasthenia, 336. 

Neurone, defined, 17. 

Neuroses, 336 ff. 

Neurotics, 332 ff. 

New England Primer, 280. 

Night fears, 127, 335. 

Non-voluntary attention, 243. 

Normal, deviation from the, 187. 

Normality, a relative term, 296. 

Norsworthy and Whitley, 217. 

Nucleus, defined, 16. 



INDEX 



361 



Observation, as a method of psychol- 
ogy, 10; varying powers of, 11; 
training of powers of, through 
practice, 11; precautions to be 
followed in making, 12 fi". 

Olfactory sensations, 224 ff . ; images, 
255. 

Oliver Twist, 112. 

Organic sensations, 224 ff.; images, 
255. 

Original nature, 200, 219. 

Ownership, as an instinct, 51 ff.; as 
related to delinquency, 283. 

Papuans, condition of childhood 

among the, 347. 
Passive imagination, 264. 
Paul Dombey, 112. 
Pavor nocturnus, 127, 335. 
Perception, and sensation, 225; 

defined, 231; of time and space, 

236. 
Perceptive powers of children, 231 ff . 
Pestalozzi, on teaching, 105; on Swiss 

mothers, 141. " 
Phobias, 132. 
Phototropism, 24. 
Physical basis of habit, 210. 
Plasticity, 201 ff., 347. 
Play, in later childhood, 72; sociabil- 
ity of, 73; boisterousness'of, 75; 

purposiveness of, 76; theories of, 

80; selfishness of, 219. 
Playmates, imaginary, 69. 
Poets, hereditary genius among, 178. 
Political affiliations, as illustrating 

social imitation, 121. 
Primitive display, 90. 
Productive imagination, 264. 
Protoplasm, cellular, 16. 
Psychasthenia, 336. 
Psychic contagion, 337. 
Psychological age, 302. 
Psychology, definition of, 1; value 

of, to the teacher, 3; vocational, 

323. 
Psycho-neuroses, common forms of 

336 ff. 
Puberty, 79, 336. 
Puffer, on gangs, 61. 
Puritans, attitude of, toward play 

and childhood, 76. 



Puzzles, delight of children in, 77. 
Pyle, on instinct in fishes, 31. 

Racial heredity, 182. 

Reading matter, of children, 194; 
of adolescents, 343. 

Reasoning, children's, 276. 

Recession, 153. 

Recognition, a process of memory, 
264. 

Reflex action, defined, 25 ff. 

Reflex arc, defined, 19. 

Reform schools, 292. 

Relativity of normaUty, 296. 

Religion, as illustrating social imita- 
tion, 121. 

Repression, as opposed to expression, 
38. 

Reproductive imagination, 264. 

Response, illustrations of, to stimuli, 
_2; free and controlled, 12. 

Retardation, 298. 

Rhythm, in play of younger children, 
69; in ring games, 69. 

Rivalry, as an instinct, 95 ff . ; mental, 
99. 

Romans, knowledge of laws of 
heredity among the primitive, 
150; condition of childhood among 
the, 352. 

Round-shoulderedness, 203. 

Rousseau, 280. 

Sadler, M. T., 355. 

Scientists, hereditary genius among, 
178. 

Secretion, as automatic activity, 25. 

Sensation, 223. 

Sensations, list of, 224; nerve path- 
ways of, 224; earliest, of infancy, 
226; child fives in a world of, 228. 

Senses, appeal to many, 234. 

Sensory and motor arc, defined, 19. 

Sensory fibers, function of, 18. 

Sheldon, on gang activities, 61. 

Shinn, Miss M. W., Biography of a 
Baby, 14; on perception, 234; on 
imagery, 258. 

Sight, development of, in infancy, 226. 

Sleep disorders, 335. 

Sleight-of-hand, delight of children 
in, 77. 



S62 



INDEX 



Sneezing, as a reflex, 26. 

Social attitude toward children, 

evolution of the, 349 ff. 
Social instincts, 58 ff. 
Social play, 72. 
Society for Prevention of Cruelty to 

Animals, 356. 
Society for Prevention of Cruelty to 

ChUdren, 356. 
Space perception, 235. 
Special classes, for bright children, 

317. 
Specialized abilities, 185, 188. 
Spontaneous attention, 243. 
Stamps, collections of, 52. 
Stanford Revision, 303. 
Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verse, 

329. 
Stimuli, improper, 289. 
Stimulus, defined, 20; of present and 

past experience, 28. 
Stream of consciousness, 239. 
Studies in heredity, 167 ff. 
St. Vitus's dance, 338. 
Subnormal children, 296 ff. 
Supernormal children, 301. 
Sympathy, as related to teasing and 

bullying, 88; as emotional behav- 
ior, 139 ff. 
Synapse, defined, 17. 

Table manners, 218. 

Tactile sensations, 224 ff. 

Taste, development of, in infants, 

226. 
Teasing, as an incentive to battle, 

83; as an instinct, 87 ff. 
Temperature sense, 227. 
Terman, L. M., 303, 317, 319, 336. 



Thinking, 269 ff . ; inductive and 

deductive, 274 ff. 
Thorndike, on original nature, 34, 

46; on imitation in animals, 122. 
"Tics," 339. 
Time perception, 236. 
Tools, craving for, among boys, 77. 
Touch, development of, in infants, 

227. 
Training, in the triangle of life, 191. 
Triangle of life, 191. 
Tropism, defined, 23 ff. 

Unlearned behavior, 200 ff. 
Unstable children, 332 ff. 

Vineland Training School, 167, 322. 
Visual images, 254. 
Visual sensations, 224 ff. 
Vocational psychology, 323. 
Voluntary attention, 243; in chil- 
dren, 250. 

Waddle, C. W., 294. 

Walter, H. E., 185. 

Wanderlust, defined, 40 ff.; as re- 
lated to curiosity, 102. 

Weissmann's theory of evolution, 
160. 

Whipple, G. M., 318. 

"Why" questions, 107. 

Will, 279 ff.; growth of, 284. 

Winking, as reflex action, 26. 

Winship, A. E., 175. 

Woodrow, H., 322. 

Woods, F. A., 179, 316. 

Wordsworth, 280. 

Yerkes, on imitation in animals, 122. 



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